APPENDIX V
THE STATISTICS OF THE GENERAL ELECTIONS, 1885-1910
The following tables are taken, with permission, from a paper read on 12
December 1906, by Mr. J. Rooke Corbett, M.A., before the Manchester
Statistical Society, of which a second and revised edition was published
in April 1910 by the Proportional Representation Society.
In these tables the totals for England, Wales, and Monmouth, Scotland and Ireland are shown separately, and the figures for England have been further subdivided according to the ten divisions into which the kingdom is divided by the Registrar General for the purpose of his work.
These ten subdivisions are as follows:
Metropolitan—
London.
South East—
Surrey.
Kent.
Sussex.
Hampshire.
Berkshire.
South Midland—
Middlesex.
Hertfordshire.
Buckinghamshire.
Oxfordshire.
Northamptonshire.
Huntingdonshire.
Bedfordshire.
Cambridgeshire.
East—
Essex.
Suffolk.
Norfolk.
South-West—
Wiltshire.
Dorsetshire.
Devonshire.
Cornwall.
Somersetshire.
West Midland—
Gloucestershire.
Herefordshire.
Shropshire.
Staffordshire.
Worcestershire.
Warwickshire.
North Midland—
Leicestershire.
Rutlandshire.
Lincolnshire.
Nottinghamshire.
Derbyshire.
North-West—
Cheshire.
Lancashire.
Yorkshire—
West Riding.
East Riding (with York).
North Riding.
Northern Division—
Durham.
Northumberland.
Cumberland.
Westmorland.
The first three columns, A, B and C, show the number of members allotted to these several divisions, the number of registered electors, and the number of members to which each division would be entitled if the 670 members of which the House of Commons is composed were divided among the several divisions in proportion to their electorates.
In taking the electorate as the basis of a proportionate redistribution of seats it is not intended to prejudge the question whether population or electorate is the better standard. The electorate has been taken because the figures are available for the very year in which the election takes place, whereas the population is only enumerated once in ten years.
The columns D and E show in two groups the number of members elected for these divisions, Liberal, Labour, and Irish members being gathered together in one column, Conservatives alone occupying the other.
It is one of the disadvantages of our present system of representation that it makes it quite impossible to ascertain the relative strength of the several parties into which the voters are divided. In the great majority of contests there is a Liberal, Labour, or Irish Nationalist candidate on one side, and a Unionist candidate on the other, and there is practically no evidence as to how many of the supporters of either candidate belong to each of the parties concerned. Any estimate of the relative strength of the Liberal and Labour parties or of the Unionist Free Traders, and Tariff Reformers must be largely a matter of guesswork. All that is possible, therefore, is to divide the voters into two groups, as has been done in these tables.