The GLIO Site

NOTES FOR CANDIDATES.

     As the borough elections will be all over before our next issue, it will be well for us to supply a few notes to be used by the would-be representatives. And first, as a curiosity, we learn from the evidence of Mr. George Wilson, given before a Committee of the House of Commons that the right to a vote for the county may be acquired in no less than 1,276 different ways, viz. :—

All these are open to inquiry and discussion before the registering barrister, and the complexity of some of the modes of proof is so great, and the persons who apply to be placed on the register are put to so much trouble and expense, that the claimants retire their claims rather than go through the innumerable difficulties connected with the inquiry and registration. Who can wonder at this that knows the annoyance and difficulty associated with the pursuit of electoral rights? 

     So much has recently been said respecting the noble principles of the men who secured the passing of the Reform Bill, that we deem it our duty to call attention to the fact that of the 56 boroughs totally disfranchised by the Reform Bill the population of the largest, Downton, was 396; those at the other end of the list, like Old Sarum, were mere mounds of earth and broken bricks, which had once formed parts of human habitations. Of the 30 which it reduced to a single representative, the population of the smallest, Petersfield, was 1,423; but the smallest among the new boroughs, Whitby, had a population of 10,399. The largest old borough retaining a single member was Westbury, with a population of 7,324; the largest new borough to which one member was given was Salford, with a population of 50,810. Thetford retained its two members, although it had only 146 electors; while only two members were given to the Tower Hamlets, with its 25,000 electors. But in order to illustrate the absence of all fixed principles in the reconstitution of the electoral system which marked the Reform Bill, we call attention to the following table of new boroughs, six of which were to return two members each, and six only one each :—

     So that six of the new boroughs, with 7,700, were to return twelve members, and another series of six, with 9,860 electors, were to return only six members. Why should the greater be estimated at a value so much greater than the lesser?

…

     The following ninety-five boroughs, viz. … Andover, Petersfield, Lymington … have an aggregate population of 646,585, and return 145 members, whereas Tower Hamlets, with a population of 647,845, return only two members.