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Home Domestic Politics and the First Two Georges, 1714-1760 The British Constitution, 1714-1832; Part 3 |
The British Constitution, 1714-1832; Part 3The House of Commons was, up till the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832, a very undemocratic body. The representation was most unequal; Cornwall, for instance, because it was a royal duchy, and therefore subject to the Crown influence, returned as many members as the whole of Scotland. In the English and Welsh counties the franchise was limited to freeholders, namely, those who owned their own land-not, of course, a large number. In the English and Welsh boroughs still greater anomalies existed, the franchise being confined to members of the corporation; consequently, in a city of the size of Bath, for instance, the number of voters was only thirty-five. Moreover, whilst towns so important as Manchester or Birmingham had no representatives at all, there were a great many small and insignificant boroughs, with a very few voters, which returned one and sometimes two members. These boroughs were known either as "rotten" or "pocket" boroughs. In the case of the former the seat was generally sold to the highest bidder (The price of seats went steadily up till the Reform Bill of 1832. About 1730 the price for the lifetime of a single parliament was £1500; a hundred years later it reached as much as £7000). A "pocket borough", on the other hand, belonged to an individual, generally a neighbouring landowner, who nominated a member to represent it. In the middle of the eighteenth century Lord Lonsdale possessed nine and the Duke of Norfolk eleven of these "pocket" boroughs, whilst it was reckoned that no less than fifty members of the House of Commons to a large degree owed their seats to the influence of the Duke of Newcastle (Two statistics may perhaps best illustrate the character of the representation in England and Wales. Towards the close of the eighteenth century, out of a total population of some seven millions, only three hundred thousand had votes; and the aggregate number of voters which two hundred and fifty members in the House of Commons represented was only just over eleven thousand).In Scotland the electoral system was just as unrepresentative. The county of Bute possessed but twelve voters, whilst in the burghs the elections were controlled by a few individuals. Just before the Reform Bill of 1832 it was reckoned that with a population of over two and a quarter millions Scotland had only three thousand electors, and it was said that more votes were cast at a single by-election in Westminster than in a Scottish general election. Moreover, the ministers responsible for Scottish affairs had an enormous influence, which they exercised to secure members favourable to the Government in power (Thus the Duke of Argyll and his brother were supreme during part of Walpole's ministry, and Henry Dundas during Pitt's rule (1783-1801) had such authority that he was known as Harry the Ninth, and practically all the Scotch members were his supporters). |
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