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The 1832 Reform Act Debate: Should the Suffrage Be Based on Property or Taxpaying?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Nancy LoPatin-Lummis
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 320 - 345
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2007

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References

1 Charles Tennyson to Lord Durham, 30 January 1831, enclosed in the letter from Tennyson to Althorp, 21 October 1831, Lord Althorp MSS, box 6, British Library (BL).

2 Cannon, John, Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar; Brock, Michael, The Great Reform Act (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Moore, David C., The Politics of Deference: A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth Century English Political System (Hassocks, UK, 1976)Google Scholar; Davis, Richard W., Political Change and Continuity, 1760–1885: A Buckinghamshire Study (Hamden, CT, 1972)Google Scholar; O’Gorman, Frank, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar; Phillips, John, Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England: Plumpers, Splitters and Straights (Princeton, NJ, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beales, Derek, “The Electorate Before and After 1832: The Right to Vote and the Opportunity,” Parliamentary History 11 (1992): 139–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see O’Gorman's, response, “The Electorate Before and After 1832,” Parliamentary History 12 (1993): 171–83Google Scholar.

3 Gash, Norman, Politics in the Age of Peel (London, 1953), x–xiGoogle Scholar. See Moore, The Politics of Deference; Mandler, Peter, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830–1852 (Oxford, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Vernon, James, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867 (New York, 1983)Google Scholar.

5 O’Gorman, Frank, “Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies: The Social Meaning of Elections in England, 1780–1860,” Past and Present, no. 135 (1992): 72–115Google Scholar; Phillips, Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England; Salmon, Philip, Electoral Reform at Work: Local Politics and National Parties, 1832–1841 (London, 2002)Google Scholar; Phillips, John and Wetherell, Charles, “The Great Reform Bill of 1832 and the Rise of Partisanship,” Journal of Modern History 63 (1991): 621–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Political Modernization of England,” American Historical Review 50 (1995): 411–36Google Scholar. See also Taylor, Miles, “Interests, Parties and the State: The Urban Electorate in England, c. 1820–1872,” in Party, State and Society, Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820, ed. Lawrence, Jon and Taylor, Miles (Aldershot, 1997), 50–78Google Scholar.

6 LoPatin, Nancy, Political Unions, Popular Politics, and the Great Reform Act of 1832 (London, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Ibid., 8.

8 O’Gorman, Frank, The Long Eighteenth Century: British Political and Social History, 1688–1832 (London, 1997), 370Google Scholar. Also see O’Gorman's “Campaign Rituals and Ceremonies,” and “The Electorate Before and After 1832.”

9 The narrative of the bill, or the story it tells, has a purpose in and of itself. For more on the uses of the narrative, see Joyce, Patrick, “The Constitution and the Narrative Structure of Victorian Politics,” in Re-reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England's Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Vernon, James (Cambridge, 1996), 179–203Google Scholar.

10 Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, 29.

11 Brock, The Great Reform Act, 18.

12 Woodhouse, Arthur S. P., Puritanism and Liberty (Cambridge, 1938), 58–59Google Scholar; Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., eds., Journals of the House of Commons: Acts and Ordinance of the Interregnum, 117 vols. (London, 1911), 1:334Google Scholar.

13 For more on this, see Birch, Anthony H., Representation and Responsible Government: An Essay on the British Constitution (Toronto, 1964)Google Scholar; Moore, The Politics of Deference; Dickinson, Harry T., Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Locke, John, Two Treatises on Government, ed. Laslett, Peter, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar.

14 Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, 31.

15 For James Burgh, see Hay, Carla, Spokesman for Reform in Hanoverian England (Washington, DC, 1979)Google Scholar.

16 Cartwright, John, Take Your Choice (London, 1776)Google Scholar. For more on the ancient constitution, see Hill, Christopher, “The Norman Yoke,” in Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1962), 46–111Google Scholar; and Pocock, J. G. A., The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

17 Pocock, J. G. A.. Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge, 1985), 260CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 For a wider discussion, see Dinwiddy, John, “Sir Francis Burdett and Burdettite Radicalism,” History 65 (1980): 17–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Roscoe, William, A Letter to Lord Brougham Esq. M.P. now Lord Brougham and Vaux, Lord High Chancellor, etc., on the Subject of Reform in the Representation of the People in Parliament (1811), in A History of Suffrage, ed. Richardson, Sarah and Clark, Anna, 6 vols. (London, 2000), 2:209Google Scholar.

20 The Hermit of Marlow [Percy Bysshe Shelley], A Proposal of Putting Reform to the Vote Throughout the Kingdom (London, 1817)Google Scholar, reprinted in Richardson and Clark, A History of Suffrage, 2:319.

21 For more on this, see Belchem, John, “Orator” Hunt: Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar, and “Henry Hunt and the Evolution of the Mass Platform,” English Historical Review 93 (1978): 739–73Google Scholar.

22 George Cayley, Address of the Reformers of Fawdon, to their Brothers the Pitmen, Keelmen, and other Labourers, on the Tyne and Wear (1819), reprinted in Richardson and Clark, A History of Suffrage, 2:225.

23 Leeds Reform Meeting, 20 September 1819, and The Address of the Female Reformers of Leeds, to the Townswomen, 20 September 1819, both reprinted in Richardson and Clark, A History of Suffrage, 2:237, 235.

24 For a wider discussion, see Bentham, Jeremy, Catechism of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1812)Google Scholar; Mill, James, “Essay on Government,” in Utilitarian Logic and Politics, ed. Lively, Jack and Rees, John (Oxford, 1978), 53–97Google Scholar.

25 Place and Parkes developed a particularly close relationship. The two corresponded through the 1820s and 1830s and had significant disagreements regarding the merits of working with the Whigs toward reform or rejecting the Reform Bill in favor of a measure that guaranteed universal manhood suffrage.

26 Parkes, Joseph, A Statement of the claim of the subscribers to the Birmingham Liverpool Railroad to an Act of Parliament, in reply to the opposition of the canal Companies (Birmingham, 1824), 73Google Scholar.

27 See Parkes, , The Governing Charter of the Borough of Warwick, 5 William and Mary, 18 March 1694, with a Letter to the Burgesses on the Past and Present State of the Corporation (Birmingham, 1827)Google Scholar.

28 He took the name of D'Enycourt in 1835 to recognize, or have others recognize, the connection between the Lincolnshire line and Edward IV (Parry, Jonathan, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain [New Haven, CT, 1993], 99)Google Scholar. Parkes was again Tennyson's election agent for Stamford in 1830 and Lambeth in 1832.

29 Tennyson to Althorp, 21 October 1831, Althorp MSS, box 6, BL.

30 Parkes to Tennyson, 13 May 1829, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/53/1, Lincolnshire Records Office (LRO).

31 Brock, The Great Reform Act, 136.

32 During the Committee of Four's formulations of the schedules and population of English boroughs, it is worth noting that they used the last available census records, which were from 1821.

33 Independence was defined as to whether or not the tenant had the protection of a long lease and, therefore, could vote independent of his landlord's influence. Tenants at will were not seen as independent and, therefore, as not fit to vote.

34 Brock, The Great Reform Act, 142.

35 See Parliamentary Papers, 1831–32, vol. 36, 507; vol. 37, 2.

36 Charles Tennyson to Lord Durham, 30 January 1831, enclosed in the letter from Tennyson to Althorp, 21 October 1831, Parkes MSS, folder 24, University College London (UCL).

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 See Vernon, Politics and the People, 215–16.

50 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Classes (London, 1968), 813Google Scholar.

51 Wahrman, Dror, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840 (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Public Opinion, Violence and the Limits of Constitutional Politics,” in Vernon, Re-reading the Constitution, 83–122.

52 This was not the main message of the Political Union movement or the radical press. See Epstein, James, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Belchem, John, “Republicanism, Popular Constitutionalism and the Radical Platform in Early Nineteenth Century England,” Social History 6 (1981): 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; LoPatin, Political Unions.

53 Parkes to Tennyson, 8 October 1837, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/31/17, LRO.

54 2 Will. IV c. 45, 729, clause 27.

55 Thorne, R. G., History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 5 vols. (London, 1986), 1:29Google Scholar.

56 Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 187.

57 See Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 32, col. 1170, and vol. 14, cols. 1231, 1288, and 1329.

58 Parkes to Tennyson, 7 March 1831, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/53/19, LRO.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 Parkes to Brougham, 18 April 1831, Brougham MSS, folder 64, UCL.

62 Brock, The Great Reform Act, 185.

63 Parkes to Tennyson, 24 May 1831, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/31/1, LRO.

64 Brock, The Great Reform Act, 207.

65 Ibid., 215.

66 2 Will. IV c. 45, 738–39, clause 26.

67 Parkes to Tennyson, 13 July 1831, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/53/26, LRO.

68 Ibid.

69 Being a copyholder was a medieval form of land tenure, “by the copy of the court roll according to the custom of the manor” (Brock, The Great Reform Act, 227).

70 Parkes to Tennyson, 12 October 1831, Tennyson MSS, 2 TDE H/94/13, LRO.

71 For more on the developing national campaign of Political Unions, see LoPatin, Political Unions.

72 Parkes to Tennyson, 31 December 1831, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/53/43, LRO.

73 Parkes mentions that his letter of the nineteenth is a direct response to the inquiry Althorp sent him on 17 October 1831. Parkes also sent a copy of this correspondence to Charles Tennyson. See Parkes to Althorp, 19 October 1831, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/38/13, LRO.

74 Ibid.

75 Parkes to Grote, 26 October 1831, Francis Place MSS, Add MSS 35149, folios 117–19, BL.

76 Parkes to Place, 24 October 1831, Place MSS, Add MSS 35149, folio 116, BL.

77 Tennyson to Durham, 21 October 1831, Althorp MSS, box 6, BL. Durham then forwarded the letter on to Althorp.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid.

82 The Speech of Lord Brougham, Lord High Chancellor of England, Delivered in the House of Lords, 7 October 1831, on the Second Reading of the English Reform Bill, with Earl Grey's Reply to the Opposition, 4th ed. (London, 1831)Google Scholar, reprinted in Richardson and Clark, A History of Suffrage, 3:113.

83 For an explanation of why the riots happened and how they differed from borough to borough, see Rudé, George, “English Rural and Urban Disturbances on the Eve of the First Reform Bill, 1830–1831,” Past and Present, no. 37 (1967): 87–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas, Susan, The Bristol Riots of 1831 and Social Reform in Britain (Bristol, 1974)Google Scholar; Thomis, Malcolm I. and Holt, Peter, Threats of Revolution in Britain, 1789–1848 (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; LoPatin, Political Unions, 87–130; Beckett, John, “The Nottingham Reform Bill Riots of 1831,” in “Partisan Politics, Principle and Reform in Parliament,” ed. Jones, Clyve, Salmon, Phillip, and Davis, Richard, special issue, Parliamentary History 24 (1995): 113–148Google Scholar.

84 See LoPatin, Political Unions, chap. 4.

85 39 Geo. III c. 79 and 57 Geo. III c. 19. These statues, enacted in 1799 and 1817, respectively, established strict definitions for sedition and for illegal political associations and societies.

86 Parkes to Edward Ellice, Sr., 12 September 1833, Parkes MSS, folder 11, H16, UCL.

87 Parkes to Althorp, 13 November 1831, Althorp MSS, box 6, BL.

88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 Ibid.

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.

96 Ibid.

97 Ibid.

98 2 Will. IV c. 45, 729, clause 30. See Brock, The Great Reform Act, 264–65; Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 188.

99 Parkes to Tennyson, 24 February 1832, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/53/46, LRO; Parkes to Tennyson, 2 March 1832, 4 TDE H/53/49, LRO; Parkes to Tennyson, 21 March 1832, 4 TDE H/53/50, LRO.

100 See Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 4, particularly the notes, which list the numerous incorrect reproductions of the bill's clauses by historians over the past four decades.

101 2 Will. IV c. 45, 738, clause 56; see also Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 20–25.

102 Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 50.

103 Parkes to Tennyson, 15 February 1832, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/53/48, LRO.

104 Ibid.

105 Ibid.

106 Parkes to Lord Melbourne, 30 August 1835, Parkes MSS, folder 16, UCL.

107 The correspondence between Parkes and Tennyson during the summer of 1832 reveals strategies and analysis of the upcoming election prospects. A key example is Parkes to Tennyson, 10 July 1832, Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/31/5, LRO.

108 For a detailed study of how this was achieved, see Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 19–42.

109 Ibid., 22.

110 Parkes had clearly discussed this with Althorp as early as February 1832, as the plans to draft specific reforms in local boards as a tool of larger municipal reform, as well as how Althorp knew about them, were detailed in Parkes's letter to Tennyson, dated 15 February 1832 (Tennyson MSS, 4 TDE H/53/48, LRO). For the details of the Commission and particularly Parkes's role, see Finlayson, Geoffrey B. A. M., “Municipal Corporation Commission and the Report, 1833–1835,” Bulletin for the Institute of Historical Research 36 (1963): 36–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “The Politics of Municipal Reform, 1835,” English Historical Review 81 (1966): 673–92Google Scholar, and “Joseph Parkes of Birmingham, 1796–1865: A Study in Philosophic Radicalism,” Bulletin for the Institute of Historical Research 46 (1973): 186–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 For a good analysis of this, see Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain, 95–110.

112 Parkes to Tennyson, 31 January 1835, Tennyson MSS, TDE H/31/10, LRO.

113 2 Will. IV, c. 45, 730, clause 32. See also Philip Salmon, “‘Reform Should Begin at Home': English Municipal and Parliamentary Reform,” in Jones et al., Partisan Politics, 110–11.

114 For more on this, see Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 185–209.

115 Parkes to Lord Brougham, 18 August 1835, copy in the Parkes MSS, original in Brougham MSS, box 19, folder 368, UCL.

116 Parkes to Tennyson, 31 January 1835, Tennyson MSS, TDE H/31/10, LRO.

117 Parkes to Durham, 1 June 1835, cited in Thomas, William, The Philosophic Radicals: Nine Studies in Theory and Practice, 1817–1841 (Oxford, 1979), 289Google Scholar.

118 Ibid.

119 Parkes to Durham, 5 January 1836, cited in Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals, 289–90.

120 Parkes to Place, 5 January 1836, Place MSS, Add. MSS 35, 151, BL.

121 Salmon, “Reform Should Begin at Home,” and Electoral Reform at Work; Lucas, Keith, English Local Government Franchise (London, 1980), 84Google Scholar. For a wider discussion, see Phillips, Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England; O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties; Vernon, Politics and the People.

122 Parkes to Durham, 5 January 1836, cited in Thomas, The Philosophic Radicals, 290.

123 William E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speech, 25 November 1879, cited in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879, ed. Foot, Michael R. D. (New York, 1971), 27–28Google Scholar.

124 See Bellamy, Richard, ed., Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth Century Political Thought and Practice (London, 1990), 8Google Scholar; Patrick Joyce, “The Constitution and the Narrative Structure of Victorian Politics,” in Vernon, Re-reading the Constitution, 190–98.

125 Parkes to Place, 5 January 1836, Place MSS, Add. MSS 35, 150, folio 100, BL.