THE 1832 REFORM ACT AND ITS CONSTITUTIONAL LEGACY
'The main change - or adaption - in nineteenth century Britain was the extension of the franchise, and the concomitant gradual democratization of Parliament, or rather of the House of Commons ... '.[1]
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century has been termed the first 'Age of Revolution'.[2] It certainly was in the sense that advocates of constitutional reform were in a position to draw upon an increasing body of works of political philosophy which justified the extension of the franchise to a mass electorate.[3] On the other hand, popular revolutions such as those by the American colonists and in France in 1789 had been journeys into uncharted territory which could have terrifying consequences for the established elite. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the MPs and Hereditary Peers who sat in Parliament were almost exclusively the landed gentry representing an increasingly narrow vested interest.[4] In an important sense Parliament was transforming itself by acquiescing to the need for electoral reform and ensuring that its own composition would change. Indeed, it was because of the deep rooted opposition to any change from elements of the landed gentry that the passing into law of the Reform Bill in 1832 should be regarded without any doubt as one of the most significant moments in the nation's constitutional history. However, it is argued in this essay that the fact that it made it to the statute book was more important than the specific provisions enacted on the face of the Act. The British Constitution unlike nearly all other constitutions is uncodified, which partly refers to the fact that it has a variety of sources. But it also has meant that many fundamental rights, including the right to vote, were not built into any constitutional design, but rather the entitlement has been incorporated pragmatically and gradually as a result of successive pieces of legislation. The 1832 Reform Act qualifies as just such a provision.
Although the extension of the franchise under this Act was relatively limited, in the second part of this essay, it will be suggested that any reflection on the reputation of the Act needs to take into account a number of factors which are of central importance to the conduct of general elections. It may seem strange looking back from a twenty first century perspective that so much of the discussion concerned who was qualified to vote judged in terms of their ownership of property. Moreover, electoral reform has not simply been about passing laws that grant an extension of the right to vote. In order to have fair elections there needed to be an equitable division of electoral boundaries to allow nationwide representation. The conduct of a general election must be overseen to prevent malpractice from overwhelming the event. Limits on the amount of funds which candidates or parties are allowed to spend has to be set to prevent candidates or parties gaining an unfair advantage over their competitors. In order to assess the contribution of the Act in historical perspective this essay not only explains why these matters were important in 1832 but it considers how such issues were tackled by the Parliaments of future generations.
Part I: The 1832 Reform Act
Ideas and events which shaped the reform movement
In view of the extreme excesses of the electoral system vividly depicted by Hogarth, which will feature later, it is not surprising that electoral reform had been on the political agenda for many years before the 1832 Act was passed.[5] In the Eighteenth Century parliamentary reform was the wish of a small, albeit, growing minority...'.[6] For many writers and reformers the extension of the franchise increasingly became a key demand. 'The reformers never looked to the common law or the judges to control the power of Parliament. They realized that the "ancient rights of Englishmen", recognized by the common law, protected the property and privileges of the élite, at the expense of the rights of ordinary people. Therefore they appealed to natural rights, ascertained by reason, rather than to pre-existing rights, established by precedent'.[7]Parliamentary reform could achieve the restoration of a balanced constitution. Constitutional improvement would be achieved by having a better Parliament.[8]Adult manhood suffrage was singled out as a demand in James Burgh's Political Disquisitions (1775). These demands were heard within Parliament. In 1776, the same year as the American rebellion,John Wilkes called for an extension of the franchise in a parliamentary speech. It is interesting that Lord Grey who later as Prime Minister led the government responsible for passing the 1832 Act had been greeted with derision when he tried to propose an electoral reform bill in 1793.[9] John Cartwright produced a pamphlet Take Your Choice setting out the main aspects of what would be incorporated in the Chartist Programme, including universal suffrage.[10] The leader of the Society for Constitutional Information founded in 1780 was calling for equal representation, annual parliaments and the universal right of suffrage'.[11]
For many radicals the Rights of Man by Tom Paine remained very influential as this work provided a principled theory of popular rights. Paine is defending the French Revolution against the onslaught of Burke: 'it was not against Louis XVI, but against the despotic principles of the government, that the nation revolted'.[12] He went on to argue that: 'All agree in establishing one point, the unity of man: by which I mean, that men are all of one degree, and consequently that all men are born equal, and with equal natural right[13] ... [he goes on to explain that] ... 'A man by natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of mind is concerned, he never surrenders it ...'.[14] This meant that while not offering a full political agenda in a modern sense, he did recognise the importance of a constitution and that 'all citizens have a right to cooperate in the formation of the law ... either personally or through their representatives'.[15] While Paine became the inspiration for pockets of more extreme radicalism William Cobbett, himself influenced by Paine, was an effective advocate of more moderate reform. As Thompson puts it: 'It was Cobbett who created this radical intellectual culture, not because he offered its most original ideas, but in the sense that he found the tone, the style and the arguments which bring the weaver, the schoolmaster, and the shipwright, into a common discourse.'[16] He voiced his ideas and criticisms in the Weekly Political Register and, in common with many others, Cobbett viewed parliamentary reform as the means to address the issue of unfairness in terms of representation what he called 'misgovernment'.
Bentham was another writer who stressed the inevitability of reform. 'The thinking minds of all nations call for change. There is a deep-lying struggle in the whole fabric of society; a boundless grinding collision of the New with the Old'.[17] The French Revolution was only regarded as the prelude which had given birth to a mighty movement which was seeking after, an imprecisely defined, higher freedom. It is easy with the benefit of hindsight to assume that a modern form of democracy was envisioned as the antidote to the undoubted dissatisfaction with the status quo. This assumption would be incorrect. Professor Hobsbawm explains that: 'For the years between the French Revolution and the Reform Bill had seen the formation of a "middle-class consciousness", more conservative, more wary of large idealist causes [...] more narrowly self-interested than in any other industrialized nation'[18] and he reminds us: '... the representative assembly which [the declaration of rights] envisaged as the fundamental organ of government was not necessarily a democratically elected one, or the regime it implied one which eliminated kings. A constitutional monarchy based on a propertied oligarchy expressing itself through a representative assembly was more congenial to most bourgeois liberals than the democratic republic which might have seemed a more logical expression of their theoretical aspirations ... '.[19] Certainly virtually all members of parliament who favoured reform in 1830-32 only identified a limited need for change which was to eliminate the worst inequalities and abuses of the system.
In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century Britain experienced the first 'industrial revolution'. It was marked by a rapidly accelerating rate of industrial growth, particularly in the cotton industry and a correspondingly sudden rate of growth in population.[20] Existing towns such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield had expanded linto great cities, other smaller towns became substantial towns e.g. around the Lancashire cotton industry: Blackburn, Bolton, Bury, Burnley, Nelson and Colne. The rapid expansion brought with it a raft of social and economic problems relating to matters ranging from unemployment, poor relief, public health and sanitation to lack of universal education. The industrial strength of the nation was being created at a breath-taking pace with many adverse implications for the workforce. It was not simply that the existing authorities were incapable of coping with such problems. The most pressing anomaly to be addressed was that there had been a complete failure to redistribute parliamentary seats to the emerging economic power of manufacturing towns in the midlands and the north which had led to a massive discrepancy between centres of population and the distribution of Parliamentary seats. The issue was not only about the right to vote, but about the right to be represented.It is important to emphasize again that there was very little prospect of the industrial working class being granted the right to vote in 1832. It took another 50 years before more than half of the adult male population could vote. As we will soon see workers only benefited indirectly as many of these towns were at least given a seat in Parliament for the first time.
The Napoleonic War when it ended in 1815 was followed by an economic slump giving rise to poverty and unemployment. In the absence of any political representation strikes, demonstrations and occasional riots were the only way for workers and the poor to express their dissatisfaction. The years between 1815-32 were marked by sporadic demonstrations and riots the size and frequency of which were in response to adverse economic circumstances. Not only did the amount of insurrection tend to be uneven, but it was not orchestrated on a national basis. The potential revolutionaries throughout this period were 'inexperienced, unclear in their minds, badly organized and divided'.[21] But, the reform movement was not simply comprised of radicals and workers. It drew support from diverse class interests including the new industrial entrepreneurs.
The priority of Lord Liverpool's government (1815-27) was to maintain law and order at all costs, and with this in mind political repression was the main government answer to political unrest. The so called 'Six Acts' of 1819 suspended Habeus Corpus (freedom from arbitrary arrest), drilling and exercises were outlawed, magistrates were empowered to search for arms, the right to hold meetings and the freedom of the press was restricted. The tragic events of Peterloo, also in 1819, where the local militia charged a peaceful demonstration, killing several and injuring many more, were in danger of being replicated. 'Not surprisingly, some historians have chosen these tense years between Waterloo and Peterloo as the nearest point Britain ever reached to social revolution'.[22] We shall see that apart from the need to eliminate inequality and abuse the desire to avoid a violent revolution on anything like the scale experienced in France was advanced as a justification for passing 1832 Reform Act.
This constitutional reform then can be discussed in terms of a wider ongoing class struggle. The incumbents in Parliament comprising both the Tory Party and the Whig party were mainly large landowners. This vested interest was seeking to hold on to their political power in the face of challenges from a new industrial elite and an emerging but not yet organised industrial working class. Popular unrest acted as a trigger for reform, but it will be apparent that there was a discernible tide of opinion which advocated change.[23] Indeed, as dissatisfaction increased demand for electoral reform became a common denominator for the leadership of the Whigs and the radicals who emerged from among skilled and literate artisans.
Pre 1832: Elections of Inequality and Abuse
It is useful to see how the elected House of Commons was composed prior to the Act and what was wrong with the arrangements. The method of election for the Westminster Parliament has always been very easy to understand. In every constituency qualified voters simply express a preference for their preferred candidate. The candidate receiving the most votes wins the seat irrespective of whether this is a majority of the votes cast. ‘First past the post’ is in no way proportional, so votes are wasted where there are large majorities and smaller parties with support thinly spread across the nation perform badly. On the other hand, it registers fluctuations in the relative support between the parties with the widest national support by showing strong shifts in the total number of seats won. The first-past-the-post method of election in the UK has contributed to the political dominance of large parties.[24]
The total representation for England and Wales of 513 seats in the House of Commons at the beginning of the nineteenth century was much as it had been at the end of William III's reign in 1702. The Union with Scotland admitted 45 Scottish members in 1707. Almost a century later the Union with Ireland in 1801 admitted 100 Irish members.[25] This added up to a total number of 658 members which interestingly is very close to the number of current members (645 MPs in 2009) but of course the population of the nation was well under half the present level.The visual references to Hogarths' images from the 1750's confirm that the agenda for electoral reform had been set well before the French Revolution.
The "pocket boroughs" were controlled by a single person or family who owned the land and were thereby able to ensure their own election or the election of candidates sympathetic to their cause. As there was no secret ballot it was relatively easy for powerful landowners to secure the election of individuals they favoured. The corrupt practices by which political positions were obtained are amplified in Hogarth's 'An Election: Canvassing for votes'. In this painting emblematic visual references have been carefully contrived to convey an unambiguous interpretation of a tainted political process: 'The new sign [outside the public house] shows gold pouring from a window of the Treasury and being laden into a wagon labelled OXFORD; thereafter it is distributed from a wheelbarrow to voters by PUNCH CANDIDATE FOR GUZZLEDOWN ... suggest[ing] that the ruling party, the Whigs, have been using money raised by taxation to pay for election expenses and bribes'.[26] A young man featured at the centre of the painting accepts two bribes at the same time, confirming that both parties resort equally to such tactics which had become a regular feature of the election merry-go-round. Prior to the act landowners with existing seats in the House of Commons or the House of Lords were able to use the patronage enjoyed because of their wealth to guarantee the return of a candidate in as many as 213 seats. Influence was exerted on the outcome in perhaps 200 more.[27]
Hogarth's panels convey the sense of a nation being failed by its political leaders. Not only do these images amplify and ridicule the cynical abuse of the system, but they also call to attention the lack of rules to regulate a process which is especially prone to abuse. In The Polling, which features election day, a soldier multiple amputee who is unable to lay his hands on the Bible to take the oath is at the head of a queue of electors. Next comes the lunatic obviously unable to comprehend the issues. He is closely followed by a corpse being carried up the steps for a vote to be recorded notwithstanding his demise. The lack of regulation is also apparent as the route to the election booth is obstructed by a partisan mob seeking to prevent the arrival of supporters of the rival party.[28]
The term 'rotten borough' is used to refer to those parliamentary seats which remained in place returning members to Parliament even though there was no longer a substantial electorate. There were famous cases which drew attention to the extreme inequities which remained. Dunwich in Suffolk where coastal erosion had caused the medieval town to disappear. It sent two members to the House of Commons despite the fact that it had only 44 houses and 32 voters. Old Sarum was where the town of Salisbury used to be several centuries earlier. As Paine observed this was perhaps most notorious of all. 'The town of Old Sarum which contains not three houses, sends two members: and the town of Manchester which contains upwards of sixty thousand souls, is not admitted to send any. Is there any principle in these things?'[29] No attempt had been made to address this problem for centuries. Now with the population growing rapidly the extent of this discrepancy in the distribution of seats produced a gross distortion in representation. 'In 1831, the cities of Manchester (population 182,000), Birmingham (144,000), Leeds (123,000) and Sheffield (92,000) had not a single MP between them ... [while] ... Cornwall with a population of 192,000 sent 44 members to parliament'.[30] The extent to which this obvious anomaly would be addressed by any bill was obviously going to be a crucial question. In particular, the difficulty was in justifying the removal of some seats without undertaking a systemic revision of the distribution of seats. This issue comes up repeatedly during the parliamentary debates on the bill in its various forms.