REPRESENTATIVE REFORM.
(From the ‟Westminster Review” for Jan. 1852)
When changes so great as that of the Reform Act were made, it is much to be regretted that the guidance of the representative principle was not more consistently followed, and provision made for the future, by some adjusting power which should of itself regulate the details. We might then have been spared the necessity of several amending Acts, and now of a new Reform Bill. The character of the Act is that of gigantic patchwork. It added and destroyed without any perceptible rule. With no allowance for the wear and tear of time, it started in a manner full of apparent caprice. Of the 56 boroughs totally disfranchised, the population of the largest, Downton, was 3,961. Of the 30 boroughs which it reduced to a single representative, the population of the smallest, Petersfield, was 1,423. The smallest new borough which was to return a single member was Whitby, with 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 in the same class being Salford, with a population of 50,810. Thetford retained its two members, with 146 electors; the Tower Hamlets gained only two for its 25,000. This was building a ruin. * * Old Sarum was obliterated, and Manchester and the metropolitan boroughs were called into political existence. The middle classes received a large accession of the franchise. The duration of the polling time was reduced, so as to exclude the recurrence of those electoral auctions by which the country had been disgraced. An increase was secured for the political power of the manufacturing and commercial classes. But small boroughs continued; and continued to be, as they had been, sinks of iniquity. Nomination remained, and is as notorious as ever. Bribery and corruption were at once found to be undiminished, if not increased. The tree had been pruned, but the axe not laid to the root. In proportion to the zeal which the people had evinced for ‟the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill,” was the disappointment which speedily followed when the painful fact appeared that reform had still left reform necessary.
In the new boroughs created by the Reform Act there some glimpse of rule and method, but very roughly applied. All those to which two members were allotted had a population of upwards of 25,000. Most of the new boroughs with only one member had a population under 25,000, but above 12,000. With universal suffrage this distinction would have been intelligible; or, indeed, with any suffrage bearing a defined proportion to the population. But that can never be predicable of a suffrage founded on house-rent, and made yet more irregular by the legal technicalities involved in the registration system; to say nothing of the absurdity of making no provision for boroughs whose population far exceeds the minimum for two members.
The borough of Andover contains only 242 10l. householders, but it returns as many members to Parliament as Liverpool, with 14,072 (or more than sixty times the number of) householders; Knaresborough, with 228 10l. householders, has as much weight in the House of Commons as the Tower Hamlets with 19,361 10l. householders; Thetford, with 203, has as much voice as Manchester with 12,836; and the votes of the members for Harwich and Marlborough, places with less than 600 electors, can neutralise the votes of the four members for the City of London, representing 20,472 electors.
Before proceeding to comment upon the representation as distributed in the counties, we must notice the light which the foregoing facts throw upon the borough representation. They show to what an extent it is appropriated by the aristocracy. It is not representation at all. Only in the more populous places has the industrial population any power. Influence and bribery divide the spoil. The predominance of the aristocracy in the House of Commons, has been ascribed to the servility of the people. Our figures refute such reasoning. If the relatives of peers have character, talent, industry, and patriotism, they are welcomed, as they ought be, by large constituencies. We might mention several splendid instances. The preponderance of small constituencies over the large ones is exhibited in the fact that 123 English and Welsh boroughs, with constituencies under 1,000 return 185 members; while there are only 77 boroughs with constituencies over 1,000, and they only return 150 members. In the valuable return obtained by Sir B. Hall, where the boroughs are grouped according to the number of electors, the first group of 14 boroughs returns 20 members, from an aggregate constituency of 3,449, and a population of 67,329. The last group in the return, of nine boroughs, also returns 20 members, but from a constituency of 141,664, and population of 2,156,493. So that in the first group each member is sent, on the average, by 172 voters, to represent a population of 3,366; and in the second group each member is sent by 7,083 voters, to represent a population of 107,824.
The time is gone when it could be alleged as an admissible answer to these anomalies ‟that the system worked well; that upon the whole the people were as truly and fairly represented in the House of Commons as if every man had a vote; that approaching more nearly to an uniform system of representation would very likely not improve, perhaps deteriorate, the character of the House of Commons,” &c. There is one particular, especially, in which no decent person can maintain that the system works well. It is an extensive system of demoralization. As a general rule, a seat is expensive. In very few instances does one cost so little as 1,000l. The aggregate outlay on a general election Is estimated at a million and a half sterling. We need not refer to the St. Alban’s revelations, or to other disclosures in the records of election committees yet more disgusting. All over the country habits of debauchery are stimulated, and consciences are tampered with. The pernicious influence of the election agent is not confined to the election time. It extends over all the intervening periods. He is a permanent missionary of demoralization, supplied with funds by those whose ambition is bent on the purchase of legislative honours. Let not the blame be shifted on the people. They are corrupt because they are corrupted. Temptation is constant and powerful; punishment most uncertain and rare. To defend this shameful part of our electoral system would be the open advocacy of the grossest vice. On the need of reform, whatever the means, in this respect, there can be no doubt. Notoriety, prescription, common usage, alleged necessity, nothing can justify it, or palliate the delay of vigorous effort for its extinction.
The rapid progress which this country is making, the migrations of its people within its own boundaries, the great changes in the proportionate numbers and importance of its different social classes, all require, not only that the registration should be re-distributed, but that a self-adjusting principle of distribution should be promptly recognised. In that way alone can we hope for finality. Without that no Reform Bill has a chance of working well for so much as a quarter of a century. The best apportionment that could have been made on the census of 1841 would have become a grievance and a nuisance, in many cases, by the census of 1851. And so will it be, yet more glaringly, by the next census. The time is favourable for the extinction of agitation on the constitution of Parliament. But a single blow is required, so that it be well aimed. ‟We cannot afford a revolution once a year,” said Lord John Russell, when the imperfections of the Reform Act began to be mooted. A fair adjustment Is good for ages.