French philosophers who saw so much power vested in a representative body could not be too loud in their praise of "English liberty." Had they investigated more closely, these same observers might have learned to their surprise that Parliament represented the people of Great Britain only in name.
[Sidenote: Undemocratic Character of Parliament]
As we have seen in an earlier chapter [Footnote: See above, pp. 265 f.], Parliament consisted of two legislative assemblies or "Houses," neither one of which could make laws without the consent of the other. One of these houses, the House of Lords, was frankly aristocratic and undemocratic. Its members were the "lords spiritual"—rich and influential bishops of the Anglican Church,—and the "lords temporal," or peers, haughty descendants of the ancient feudal nobles or haughtier heirs of millionaires recently ennobled by the king. [Footnote: A peer was technically a titled noble who possessed an hereditary seat in the House of Lords. George III created many peers: at his death there were over 300 in all.] These proud gentlemen were mainly landlords, and as a class they were almost as selfish and undemocratic as the courtiers of France.
But, the French philosopher replies, the representatives of the people are found in the lower house, the House of Commons; the peers merely give stability to the government. Let us see.
One thing at least is certain, that in the eighteenth century the majority of the people of Great Britain had no voice in choosing their "representatives." In the country, the "knights of the shire" were supposedly elected, two for each shire or county. But a man could not vote unless he had an estate worth an annual rent of forty shillings, and, since the same amount of money would then buy a good deal more than nowadays, forty shillings was a fairly large sum. Persons who could vote were often afraid to vote independently, and frequently they sold their vote to a rich noble, so that many "knights of the shire" were practically named by the landed aristocracy, the wealthy and titled landlords.
Matters were even worse in the towns, or "boroughs." By no means all of the towns had representation. Moreover, for the towns that did choose their two members to sit in the House of Commons, no method of election was prescribed by law; but each borough followed its own custom. In one town the aristocratic municipal corporation would choose the representatives; in another place the gilds would control the election; and in yet another city there might be a few so-called "freemen" (of course everybody was free,—"freeman" was a technical term for a member of the town corporation) who had the right to vote, and sold their votes regularly for about £5 apiece. In general the town representatives were named by a few well-to-do politicians, while the common 'prentices and journeymen worked uninterruptedly at their benches. It has been estimated that fewer than 1500 persons controlled a majority in the House of Commons.
In many places a nobleman or a clique of townsmen appointed their candidates without even the formality of an election. In other places, where rival influences clashed, bribery would decide the day. For in contested elections, the voting lasted forty days, during which time the price of votes might rise to £25 or more. Votes might be purchased with safety, too, for voting was public and any one might learn from the poll-book how each man had voted. Not infrequently it cost several thousand pounds to carry such an election.
[Sidenote: "Rotten Boroughs">[
We may summarize these evils by saying that the peasants and artisans generally were not allowed to vote, and that the methods of election gave rise to corruption. But this was not all. There was neither rhyme nor reason to be found in the distribution of representation between different sections of the country. Old Sarum had once been a prosperous village and had been accorded representation, but after the village had disappeared, leaving to view but a lonely hill, no one in England could have told why two members should still sit for Old Sarum. Nor, for that matter, could there have been much need of representation in Parliament for the sea-coast town of Dunwich. Long ago the coast had sunk and the salt-sea waves now washed the remains of a ruined town. Bosseney in Cornwall was a hamlet of three cottages, but its citizens were entitled to send two men to Parliament.
While these decayed towns and "rotten boroughs" continued to enjoy representation, populous and opulent cities like Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield were ignored. They had grown with the growth of industry, while the older towns had declined. Yet Parliamentary representation underwent no change from the days of Charles II to the third decade of the nineteenth century. Thus Parliament in the eighteenth century represented neither the different classes of society nor the masses of population. Politics was a gentleman's game. The nobleman who sat in the upper house had his dummies in the lower chamber. A certain Sir James Lowther had nine protégés in the lower house, who were commonly called "Lowther's Ninepins." A distinguished statesman of the time described the position of such a protégé: "He is sent here by the lord of this or the duke of that, and if he does not obey the instructions which he receives, he is held to be a dishonest man."