The Electorate and the Repeal of the Corn Laws

G. S. R. Kitson Clark

doi:10.2307/3678565

The Electorate and the Repeal of the Corn Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009

G. S. R. Kitson Clark

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I Must start by saying that everything in this paper must be subject to correction from two quarters. Mr. Norman Gash has written but not yet published a book entitled Politics in the age of Peel, which will be a study of the representative system in the twenty years after the Reform Bill, and which will explain to us very much that we need to understand. Secondly, all generalizations about elections are open to correction, indeed are normally in urgent need of correction, by those historians who are prepared to make a more or less intensive study of local conditions in some district. Failure to realize the significance of local conditions vitiates the value of some of the conclusions in that otherwise useful book, Mr. Seymour's Electoral Reform in England and Wales, but it has vitiated other books of more general reference than Mr. Seymour's. In fact we have all been content to describe far too much of the history of the nineteenth century in the terms of the play of a few principal actors posturing before a back-cloth painted with conventional figures, the landlord, the manufacturer, the artisan and worst of all a mass of undifferentiated ciphers without faces which we are pleased to call the middle class. The local historian, and only the local historian, can tear this cloth aside. What he will reveal will not always be a decorous picture; the artist best suited to portray it is obviously Hogarth more often than seems appropriate for the background to such highly respectable figures as Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, John Bright and William Ewart Gladstone.

Type: Research Article
Information: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 1 , December 1951 , pp. 109 - 126

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3678565 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1951

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References

^{page 109 note 1} Seymour, C., Electoral Reform in England and Wales; the development and operation of the Parliamentary Franchise, 1832–1885 (Yale Historical Publications, Studies III, New Haven, 1915)Google Scholar.

^{page 112 note 1} Leeds Mercury, 8 July 1841.

^{page 112 note 2} Leeds Mercury, 10 Sept. 1841.

^{page 112 note 3} Dod, C. R., Electoral Facts from 1832 to 1852 impartially stated (London, 1852)Google Scholar.

^{page 113 note 1} Debate in the House of Commons, 15 March 1853 (Hansard, 3rd Series, cxxv. 233).

^{page 113 note 2} Dod, , op. cit., p.301Google Scholar.

^{page 113 note 3} Add. MSS. 40,485, fo. 2: F. R. Bonham to Peel (undated).

^{page 113 note 4} A Daily News, 29 March 1849.

^{page 113 note 5} Times, 3 July 1841.

^{page 114 note 1} Seymour, , op. cit., pp. 127–8Google Scholar.

^{page 114 note 2} Times, 24 June 1841.

^{page 114 note 3} Hansard, 3rd Series, cxxvi. 112.

^{page 114 note 4} Select Committee on Dockyard Appointments. Minutes of Evidence 320, H.C. 1852–3, xxv. 340.

^{page 114 note 5} Times, 2 July 1841.

^{page 114 note 6} Add. MSS. 40,501, fo. 147: Lucas to Peel, 29 Jan. 1842.

^{page 114 note 7} Add. MSS. 40,481, fo. 180: Lincoln to Peel, 14 Oct. 1843.

^{page 115 note 1} Times, 28 June 1841.

^{page 115 note 2} Select Committee on Dockyard Appointments. Minutes of Evidence 197, H.C. 1852–3, xxv. 217.

^{page 115 note 3} Turberville, T. C., Worcestershire in the 19th Century (1852), pp. 50–2Google Scholar.

^{page 117 note 1} Bagenal, P. H. D., Life of Ralph Bernal Osborne (1884), pp. 39–47Google Scholar.

^{page 117 note 2} HonBerkeley, Grantley F., My Life and Recollections, ii (1865), chapters vi and viiiGoogle Scholar.

^{page 117 note 3} Times, 8 Sept. 1841.

^{page 117 note 4} Add. MSS. 40,531, fos. 291–309; 40,617, fos. 141,146.

^{page 117 note 5} Dod, , op. cit., p. 197Google Scholar.

^{page 118 note 1} Dod, , op. cit., p. 312Google Scholar.

^{page 118 note 2} Dod, , op. cit., p. 143Google Scholar; Times, 14 June 1841.

^{page 118 note 3} Macclesfield, , Bury, : Times, 2 07 1841Google Scholar.

^{page 119 note 1} Times, 26 June 1841.

^{page 119 note 2} Hansard, 3rd Series, cxxv. 233 ff.

^{page 120 note 1} Broughton, Lord (John Cam Hobhouse), Recollections of a Long Life (1909), vi. 271Google Scholar.

^{page 120 note 2} Minutes of Evidence on Bewdley Election Petition 328–29 (1848), H.C. 1847–8, x. 544–5.

^{page 120 note 3} Hansard, 3rd Series, cxxv. 202.

^{page 120 note 4} Add. MSS. 40,616, fo. 206: Graham to F. R. Bonham, 26 June 1841.

^{page 120 note 5} Bewdley Election Petition (loc. cit.).

^{page 120 note 6} Information communicated by MrFort, R., M.P. for the Clitheroe division of Lancashire (1950)Google Scholar, seveal members of whose family represented Clitheroe in this period and immediately afterwards. Important information about the influence of manufacturers in Clitheroe has also been communicated to me by Mr. R. Langshaw of Clitheroe, but too late for inclusion in this paper.

^{page 121 note 1} Seymour, , op. cit., pp. 135–6Google Scholar.

^{page 122 note 1} Times, 8 July 1841.

^{page 123 note 1} Leeds Mercury, 24 July 1841.

^{page 123 note 2} Times, 8 June 1841.

^{page 123 note 3} Driver, C. H., Tory Radical: the life of Richard Oastler (New York, 1946)Google Scholar.

^{page 124 note 1} Hansard, 3rd Series, cxxv. 204 (speech by Mr. Seymer).

^{page 124 note 2} Seymour, , op. cit., pp. 79–83Google Scholar.

^{page 125 note 1} Mosse, G. L., ‘The Anti-league 1844–6’; (Econ. Hist. Rev., xvii. 134 ff.)Google Scholar, but much important work by other scholars on this subject is as yet un-published.

^{page 125 note 2} Hansard, 3rd Series, lxxxvi. 727.

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