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Dissolution of Parliament-Proceedings for Elections under the Reform Act-Effect of Changes in the system of Representation-Condition of the Nomination Boroughs-Electoral changes in close Corporations-The new Representation-Metropolitan BoroughsManufacturing Towns-Scotland-Ireland-Approaching meeting of the Reformed Parliament-Fears of Anti-Reformers-Extension of Popular Literature during the Crisis.

PARLIAMENT, having been prorogued on the 16th of August, was dissolved by proclamation on the 3rd of December. A new parliament was then summoned. During the autumn and early winter the entire population had been engaged in preparing for that reconstruction of the entire framework of the representative system with which, according to some, a new and more glorious temple of liberty should be built up. According to others, this disjointed and dangerous scaffolding of modern experiment would perish in that whirlwind of anarchy which was soon to sweep over the land. The preparations for a general election were altogether so new,-so entirely different from the rough and ready license long associated with the exercise of the suffrage-that many in England began to think with regret of the

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PROCEEDINGS FOR ELECTIONS UNDER THE REFORM ACT. [1832.

good old times when the oath at the election-booth, amidst the bluster of counsel and the cheers or hisses of the mob, was the sole test of the freeholder's or occupier's right to vote. What formalities were now to be gone through. On the 20th of June there was affixed on the door of every church and chapel a notice, requiring all persons who might be entitled to vote for Knights of the Shire in respect of property situate in that parish or township, to send the particulars of their claims to the overseers. Of the claims thus made the overseers were to prepare a list, and publish it in the same manner before the last day of July. A similar process, with some slight variation, was to be pursued in boroughs. The overseers were to prepare the list, and parties who had been omitted were to demand the insertion of their names. But now arises a second process which, whether in village or in town, is for a fortnight to be a perpetual source of discussion and dispute, at every market dinner-table and in every club-room. Objectors to the names in the lists are to send their objections to certain authorities. The cavillings are hushed for awhile. The objections are made; but these are no more than the pleas for a judicial investigation. A new and strange machinery is to come into operation between the 15th of September and the 25th of October, to separate the wheat from the chaff. The great winnower is the revising-barrister. A day or two of dispute in every county town and in every borough, and then the object is accomplished which is set forth in the Act" it is expedient to form a Register." The lists are duly attested and copied into proper books. All the work of swearing, and cross-examination, and decision of the returning-officer,-who, if he were the mayor of a borough, had as little legal knowledge as mayors commonly possessed,was at an end. The marginal note to the statute describes in a few words what would be the result of this preliminary investigation-" no inquiry at the time of election, except as to the identity of the voter, the continuance of his qualification, and whether he has voted before at the same election."

The proclamation summoning a new parliament has gone forth. But what a change has taken place in the arrangements for the approaching hour of battle. For county elections the polling was to continue for two days, and to last during seven hours of the first day, and eight hours of the second. To accomplish this the counties were to be divided into convenient districts for polling. In the same way the elections for boroughs were to occupy only two days, and if necessary, polling-booths were to be erected at separate places of the same borough. Not altogether would the immemorial electionrow, the speeches, the fun and the fight below the hustings, be discontinued. There would be a nomination-day, on which protestations and pledges might be duly given, and the troublesome querist bowed off or hooted down. After the nomination the humours of an election were pretty nearly over. There was much real business to be done in committee-rooms, and zealous partizans hurried to and fro, and whispered magical words of encouragement to voters whose consciences were too scrupulous for a sudden resolve. Eight-and-forty hours saw the end of all this. The day of payment was to come for the unhappy candidate; probably the petition to the House of Commons against an undue return; the determination of a committee to

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put down bribery; the ranker growth of the weed after the scratching over of the ground on which it flourished.

If the modes of election were altered in this most revolutionary fashion, in places which had retained their old, or acquired their new, privilege of sending members to parliament, how much more revolutionary was the change which took away this right from fifty-six English boroughs returning collectively a hundred and eleven members: and which reduced the number of representatives in other boroughs so as to take a hundred and forty-three members out of the old scheme of representation.

The history of our ancient system of summoning to Parliament for cities and boroughs is full of obscurity. It is difficult at first to understand how places which could never have been very populous or wealthy should have been selected, in common with towns which in very early times were great marts of commerce, possessing as they did all the organization of municipal government which was so marked a characteristic of the life of England in the days of feudality. These seats of industry were fitted for electoral rights. Gradually many of the municipal authorities usurped the rights of the freemen, and became themselves the sole possessors of the franchise. The earliest record of the regular existence of the House of Commons is from the reign of Edward the First. The list up to the time of Henry the Eighth of cities and boroughs sending representatives is strikingly illustrative of the stability as well as the mutability of human affairs. Of the hundred and sixty-three places of this early period which had not intermitted their privilege at the time of the Reform Bill,-returning collectively three hundred and thirteen members,-there were only twenty-nine wholly disqualified, and twenty-five partially disqualified, for want of a sufficient population in 1832. Mr. Hallam was of opinion that it would be difficult to name any town of the least consideration in the 14th or 15th centuries which did not at some time or other return members to parliament; and he concluded that if we found any inland town or seaport which had never enjoyed the elective franchise, we must suppose that it had since emerged from obscurity. He subsequently qualified this opinion, although true in the main, by recollecting exceptions in the northern part of England, such as Sheffield and Manchester.* Of the petty boroughs of the 15th and 16th centuries that passed into schedule A, we can scarcely understand why the number should have been so few, except by referring to the undoubted fact that representation was often regarded by the burgesses as a burden rather than a privilege. Their old custom of returning members to parliament often dropped into disuse. John Paston, in 1472, writes to his brother Sir John, "If ye miss to be burgess of Maldon, and my lord Chamberlain will, ye may be in another place. There be a dozen towns in England that choose no burgess which ought to do it. Ye may be set in for one of those towns, if ye be friended." + In the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, there were forty-six new writs addressed to comparatively petty places with the exception of the City of Westminster. Few of these were derived from a popular principle, such as had influenced the early constitution of the House of Commons. They

"Constitutional History," chap. xiii.

+"Paston Letters," Ramsay's edition, vol. ii. p. 71.

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CONDITION OF THE NOMINATION BOROUGHS.

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were called into parliamentary existence for the purpose of strengthening the government, whether Protestant or Popish, in the revolutions of religion. Of the boroughs of Edward the Sixth, seven passed into Schedule A; of those of Mary, five were thus disfranchised; and of those of Elizabeth sixteen. Of these comparatively modern seats of venality twelve were in Cornwall.

Of the fifty-six English boroughs which had been scheduled into a political death, the representative history would be exceedingly curious if it could be traced not merely from the dry rolls of parliament, but from the secret records of great peers, who held not only these very obscure places to do what they would with their own, but dominated over others which had their mark upon them in schedule B, and even over others which had no mark at all. "What right," exclaimed Sydney Smith, during the discussions on the Reform Bill, "has this lord or that marquis to buy ten seats in Parliament in the shape of boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me ?" This was not a rhetorical flourish; the question was founded upon a well-known fact. "The duke of Norfolk was represented by eleven members; lord Lonsdale by nine; lord Darlington by seven; the duke of Rutland, the marquis of Buckingham, and lord Carrington, each by six. Seats were held, in both Houses alike, by hereditary right."+ Marvellous is it to look back upon the condition of some of the nomination boroughs, which my lord handed over to his son just come from Eton, or to Vellum the Steward, or to Mr. Plumpkin, a neighbouring country gentleman, or to the distant relation in the County Militia who calls up the carriage at the Opera, or to the barrister who has written an article in the "Quarterly,"-as these nominees are described by the reverend humorist. Foremost is Old Sarum, which, in 1831, returned two members, absolutely with a population that stands in the census thus, , as too small to be enumerated. Nevertheless, a ceremony of choosing two burgesses who should interpret his patriotic wishes in Parliament was gone through by the one elector of the borough, who kept the ale-house at the foot of the venerable mound. Bramber borough, also returning two members, was in schedule Aborough and parish having twenty-one inhabited houses and six uninhabited, with a male population of fifty-six. The railway traveller approaching the Redhill station may look upon the picturesque woods and beautiful mansion of Gatton. Its glory is departed, for no longer come out upon the lawn the seven electors enjoying household suffrage to return the two right honourables who were nominated by the owner of that great house. Dunwich, once the seat of the first East-Anglian bishop, was washed away by the sea; but it had not lost all its splendour, for, out of its forty-four hovels came the halfdozen voters who returned the earl of Brecknock and a Commoner to represent them in Parliament. The changes in the coast line had made Winchelsea desolate, but no changes of society could deprive Winchelsea of its glorious privilege of having as potent a voice in the legislature as Liverpool. Most valuable were such places as property, for the nomination to them was notoriously sold. The nomination for Gatton, without the estate, was held to be worth a hundred thousand pounds as an investment. There is a passage

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in Locke's famous "Treatise on Civil Government" which sufficiently shows that such anomalies of English representation existed at the time of the Revolution, as they would continue to exist for nearly a century and a half later. "Things not always changing equally, and private interest often keeping up customs and privileges when the reasons of them are ceased, it often comes to pass, that in governments, where part of the legislative consists of representatives chosen by the people, in tract of time this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon. To what gross absurdities the following of a custom, when reason has left it, may lead, we may be satisfied when we see the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheep-cote, or more inhabitants than a shepherd is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers as a whole county, numerous in people and powerful in riches. This strangers stand amazed at, and every one must confess needs a remedy."

The electors of the favoured Nomination Boroughs, whether voters by scot and lot, or potwallopers, or holding by burgage tenure, had little cause to weep over what some parliamentary orators called the extinction of ancient rights. They had a very small share in the division of the spoil. A leg of mutton and trimmings at the Chequers was their general reward for the discreet exercise of their noble privileges. The borough patrons, Whigs or Tories, for each party had a tolerably equal share in this species of property,put the purchase-money into their pockets at every election, without caring to oil the machinery which worked the mine. When Romilly bought his seat for Horsham of the duke of Norfolk, the "free and independent electors" had little advantage of the cash. When George the Third, in 1779, wrote to lord North, "If the duke of Northumberland requires some gold pills for the election, it would be wrong not to satisfy him,"* his grace of Northumberland's electors were necessarily content with a bread pill or two without the gilding. There was no insurrection in the decayed boroughs; no threatened march to London, when their electoral privileges were quietly buried, never again to be exhumed. Not so noiseless was the grief of the close corporations, who, in some ancient cities and manufacturing towns, returned the representatives of populous communities. Sad was the day of December when the mayor, ten aldermen, and twenty-four common-councilmen of the city of Bath found that their power of choosing the representatives of fifty thousand persons was come to an end. Dire was the grief when the bailiff and twelve burgesses of Buckingham could no longer do the bidding of the lord of Stowe. With dejected looks the corporators of no very small number of boroughs had to go forth into the market-place to proclaim the writ that would cease to be a symbol of their exclusive power. And yet, in such case, what was called the respectability of a town was not wholly swamped in the flood of democracy. With singular inconsistency it was maintained, in the case of Bath, that "the first member elected by the new constituency was the very same gentleman whom the corrupt and jobbing corporators had returned for six or seven parliaments, as they had done his father for three parliaments, before."+

* Letters of Lord North, appended to Lord Brougham's "Sketches of Statesmen," vol. i. p. 137, edition 1855. + 46 VOL. VIII.

Quarterly Review," vol. xlix. p. 267.

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