The GLIO Site

UNREPRESENTED TOWNS. 

     The Pall Mall Gazette has done good service by directing attention to the anomalies in our representative system, which it was hoped the Reform Bill would have removed. It shows that the present moment we have in England a number of towns and large metropolitan parishes which are unrepresented. These places have a total population of 1,495,000 persons, but several are to be made into boroughs should Schedule B of the Reform Bill pass in the shape it reached the Lords, and this will leave about 1,000,000 of urban residents outside of parliamentary boroughs. Putting the metropolitan parishes like Lewisham, Battersea, and Wandsworth apart, there are many considerable towns without representatives. None in the subjoined list have so few as 10,000 inhabitants, and some of the largest approach to 20,000, and one exceeds that population. Statement of the names and population of 28 English towns that do not return members to Parliament:—

The inequality of the town representation is well seen when the preceding list is compared with the following one. In the next the population of the boroughs is on the average upwards of 800 below the towns in the former account, but it is their fortune to send two members each to the House of Commons instead of none. Statement of the names and population of twenty-nine English boroughs that return two members each to Parliament:—

In this group it will be found that there are three Staffordshire, two Lincoln, two Kentish, two Cornish, two Devonshire, and two Somersetshire boroughs. Furthermore, there are twenty-two of the smallest boroughs which either return one member each or which will hereafter be reduced to that number. Here the most populous borough, Tewkesbury, has only 5,876, and the least populous, Arundel, 2,498 inhabitants. 

Statement of the names and population of twenty-two English boroughs that return one member each to Parliament.

* These boroughs to be reduced from two members each to one each.

     In this single-membered group there are three Hampshire, three Devon, three North York, and two Wiltshire boroughs

Or we may say that these fifty-one boroughs, of an average population of 9,574, return eighty members to the House. There are forty-three boroughs of intermediate size of which no notice has been taken; they fall under 10,000 inhabitants and exceed 6,000; on the average they count 7,547 souls each.— Pall Mall Gazette.