But with all the considerable distress, in town and country alike amongst the working people, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, swift progress was taking place in agriculture and in manufactures. Only, the accumulated wealth fell into fewer hands, and the fluctuations in the demand for goods, caused partly by the opening up of new markets, brought successions of good times and bad times. "The workmen shared but partially in the prosperity, and were the first to bear the brunt of hard times."[[78]]
The Need for Parliamentary Reform
The point for us to note here is that the changed economic conditions made Parliamentary reform a necessity, and brought the question of popular enfranchisement within sight. It was useless for Burke to maintain the incomparable beauty of the British constitution; English politicians might be indifferent to political theories of democracy, and heartily dislike any notion of radical change, but the abuses were too obvious to prevent reform.
Whatever the size of the county it returned two members elected by freeholders, and the cost of a county election was enormous. Some of the boroughs, especially in Cornwall, were tiny villages. Eighteen members were returned from such boroughs in that part of Cornwall which now returns one member for the Liskeard Division. The fields of Old Sarum belonged to seven electors and returned two members. As there was no habitation whatever in this "borough" of Old Sarum, a tent was put up for the convenience of the returning officer at election times. No general law decided the borough franchise. Local custom and various political and personal considerations settled who should vote for members of Parliament. Places like Westminster and Preston had practically manhood suffrage. In most of the "corporation boroughs" the franchise was restricted exclusively to freemen of the borough, and to the self-elected non-resident persons who composed the governing body before the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835. A small number of rich and powerful men really worked nearly all the elections. Seats were openly bought and sold, and a candidate had either to find a patron who would provide him with a seat, or, failing a patron, to purchase a seat himself. Fox first entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Midhurst, and Sir George Trevelyan has described how it took place. Midhurst was selected by the father of Charles James Fox as "the most comfortable of constituencies from the point of view of a representative; for the right of election rested in a few small holdings, on which no human being resided, distinguished among the pastures and the stubble that surrounded them by a large stone set up on end in the middle of each portion. These burbage tenures, as they were called, had all been bought up by a single proprietor, Viscount Montagu, who when an election was in prospect, assigned a few of them to his servants, with instructions to nominate the members and then make back the property to their employer. This ceremony was performed in March, 1768, and the steward of the estate, who acted as the returning officer, declared that Charles James Fox had been duly chosen as one of the burgesses for Midhurst, at a time when that young gentleman was still amusing himself in Italy."
Three years earlier Burke had entered Parliament as a nominee of Lord Rockingham's. Gibbon sat in the House for some years under patronage. Gladstone first became a member by presentation to a pocket borough, and later spoke in praise of this method of bringing young men of promise into Parliament. John Wilson Croker estimated that of six hundred and fifty-eight members of the House of Commons at the end of the eighteenth century, two hundred and seventy-six were returned by patrons. Men of more independence of mind who could afford to buy seats did so, and many of the reformers—including Burdett, Romilly and Hume—thus sat in the House.
Manufacturing Centres Unrepresented in Parliament
It was not so much that the landowning aristocracy were over-represented in Parliament by their control of so many pocket boroughs, as that great manufacturing centres were entirely unrepresented. The middle-class manufacturers had no means of making their influence felt in the unreformed House of Commons, for towns of such importance as Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham sent no representatives to Parliament. This meant that Parliament was out of touch with all the industrial life of the nation, and that nothing was done till after the Reform Act in the way of serious industrial legislation.
35 constituencies with hardly any voters at all returned 75 members
46 constituencies with less than 50 voters in each returned 90 "
19 constituencies with less than 100 voters in each returned 37 "
26 constituencies with less than 200 voters in each returned 52 "
84 male electors in other constituencies returned 157 "
The Reform Act of 1832 changed all this. It disfranchised all boroughs with less than 2,000 inhabitants—fifty-six in all; allowed one member only to boroughs with between 2,000 and 4,000; gave representatives to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and to several other large manufacturing towns and London boroughs; extended the county franchise to leaseholders and £50 tenants at will; and settled the borough franchise on a uniform qualification of occupation in a house of £10 rateable value. It also fixed two days, instead of fifteen, as the limit for county elections, and one day for boroughs.