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IV. Some Difficulties of Parliamentary Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2010

Norman McCord
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Extract

The process of parliamentary reform which laid the foundations for a democratic political structure in this country contained much that was haphazard, and it is the object of this paper to discuss some of these elements, and particularly some of the conceptions and aims on which the legislation was based, and the technical defects of the legislation itself.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

1 E.g. by G. S. R. Kitson Clark, The Making of Victorian England, pp. 6–7. John Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party, p. xix, gives an instance of the utility of the term in a more limited application.

2 N. McCord, The Anti-Corn Law League, pp. 29–31.

3 P. J. V. Rolo, George Canning, pp. 167–8. Dr Robert Robson tells me that this is not the only such statement in Canning's letters.

4 Speech at an education meeting at Tamworth, printed in Opinions of Sir Robert Peel (1850), P. 489.

5 4/13/1830.

6 Law and Public Opinion in England (2nd ed.), p. 187, n. 1.

7 McCord, op. cit. pp. 149–161.

8 Robert King, North Shields Theatres, pp. 78–9. At pp. 87–8 ‘The Betting Boy's Career from the Counting House to the Hulks, or Joe Muggins' Dog’, provides a similar example denouncing the evils of gambling.

9 Newcastle Courant, 24 July 1852. The use of the word ‘intelligence’ in this connexion partakes of the older meaning of ‘information’, and in view of the limited educational opportunities available to the poor the identification of ‘property and intelligence’ by the Whigs is less absurd than may at first sight appear.

10 It is no longer possible to suppose that Palmerston was adamant against further reform (see Vincent, op. cit. p. 147).

11 Party considerations also had some effect here, particularly in the case of the abortive Conservative Bill of 1859, which was designed to strengthen the party which proposed it, and failed in part because of a cunning manoeuvre by Russell.

12 R. J. Harrison, in Before the Socialists, pp. 116 ff., has shown how even the dominant elements in the working class agitation out of doors shared a good deal of this feeling, and were willing to accept serious limitations of the full doctrine of manhood suffrage.

13 An argument advanced by an editorial in The Times of 8 March 1866.

14 Since this argument was first drafted, invaluable additional support for the account of the Second Reform Act has appeared in Robert Blake's Disraeli, F. B. Smith's The Making of the Second Reform Bill, and John Vincent's The Formation of the Liberal Party, all of which contain illustrations of the defective nature of the information available to the principal actors.

15 Speech at Manchester, 18 July 1865.

16 Vincent, op. cit. p. 219.

17 Ibid. pp. 173, 253.

18 For the tortuous manoeuvres of the three leaders and their objectives, see Vincent, op. cit. (Bright, pp. 184–5, for instance, and Gladstone, pp. 224–5), Smith, op. cit. (many instances of Disraeli's tergiversations) and Blake, op. cit. (frank statement of Disraeli's aims in 1866–67).

19 Vincent, op. cit. p. 226, cites a good example in the hardship which incidentally followed the abolition of compounding rates.

20 4 May 1865 and 2 June 1866.

21 T. Burt, Autobiography, p. 208, and A. Watson, A Great Labour Leader; the Life of Thomas Burt, ch. XI.

22 Neal Blewett,‘The Franchise in the United Kingdom, 1885–1918’, in Past and Present, no. 32 (Dec. 1965).

23 Cited by Dunbabin, J. P. D. in English Historical Review, lxxxi, no. 318 (Jan. 1966), 82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Ernest Bevin, I, 12.

25 R. Jenkins, Asquith, pp. 68–9. A fuller, but prejudiced, account of the affair is in Annual Register (1893).