Ideas of political representation in Parliament, 1660-1832

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Ideas of
Political ^Representation

in ^Parliament

1651 — 1832

The Gladstone Essay 1914

BY

PHILIP ARNOLD GIBBONS

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE

©yforb

B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET

IDEAS OF POLITICAL
REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

LONDON AGENTS
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO., LIMITED

IDEAS OF

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
IN PARLIAMENT

1660 — 1832

THE GLADSTONE ESSAY
1914

BY

PHILIP ARNOLD GIBBONS

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
"VIM PROMOVET INSITAM "

B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET

MCMXIV

SCHEME OF THE ESSAY

PAGE

INTRODUCTION.

EFFECT ON IDEAS OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OF —

(a) THE POSITION HELD BY THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

IN THE CONSTITUTION AND IN ENGLISH POLITICAL
LIFE - 7

(b) THE REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER OF THE HOUSE

OF COMMONS - - - - - 8

(c) THE INTERFERENCE OF THE CROWN IN THE HOUSE

OF COMMONS - - 10

I. IDEAS OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
UP TO 1760.

DECLINE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAS OF THE GREAT RE-
BELLION - - - ii
SHAFTESBURY'S TRACT FORECASTS LATER WHIG IDEAS - 13
ABSENCE OF PARTY THEORIES AT THE TIME OF THE REVO-
LUTION ... - - 16
IDEA OF PROPERTY QUALIFICATION UNDER WILLIAM III.
AND ANNE - - - - - - 17

THE WHIG THEORY OF THE REPRESENTATIVE - - 20

OPPOSITION TO THE WHIG THEORY OF THE REPRESENTATIVE 23

SWIFT AND THE TORY IDEA OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 25

II. IDEAS OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
FROM 1760 TO 1832.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PERIOD - - - - 28

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE PEOPLE
OWING TO (a) INFLUENCE OF THE CROWN AND (b) INDUS-
TRIAL REVOLUTION - - 29

v

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

THE FIRST PARLIAMENTARY REFORMERS ATTACK THE IN-
FLUENCE OF THE CROWN - - - 31

THE CONSERVATIVE THEORY OF THE CONSTITUTION - 33

THE LIBERAL WHIGS AND THE IDEAS OF THE REFORM

BILL ... -41

THE RADICALS - -48

CONCLUSION - - - '55

Ideas of Political Representation
in Parliament

From the Accession of Charles II. to the
Great Reform Bill of 1832

THE period of English History, commencing with
the Restoration and ending with the Reform Bill of
1832, is pre-eminently one in which the House of
Commons, having asserted and vindicated its con-
stitutional position, takes its place as the central
figure in the political life of England. Taking the
period as a whole it is safe to assert that the repre-
sentatives of the people have no longer to defend
themselves against any attack on their position as an
integral part of the Constitution, and although it is
true that under the later Stuarts the Parliament had
the utmost difficulty in making good its claim to a
share in the decision of national policy, and was con-
stantly liable to have its statutes overridden by the
suspending or dispensing power of the Crown, yet
neither Charles II. nor James II. attempted to rule
without Parliaments as their father had done, or, if
such was the real policy of the latter, it had not been
definitely formulated by the time of the Revolution.

7

8 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

Both seem to have preferred the easier method of
tampering with the elections and so controlling the
House, whilst from the accession of the House of
Hanover this latter expedient was the only means
whereby the authority of the Crown could be in-
creased. The position of the House of Commons in
the Constitution is, then, assured, and its importance
in the political life of the country is illustrated by the
great attention paid by all modern histories to its
debates and decisions, even to the exclusion of other
important factors in national history. The House
of Commons was, in fact, the central figure in Eng-
land, and it is round the House as a nucleus that
ideas of political representation group themselves,
and become either an attempt to explain its forma-
tion or a proposal for its reform. A radical theory,
however extreme it may be, nearly always looks to
the reformation of the House of Commons for its
fulfilment ; a conservative theory will merely attempt
to explain its composition from its own point of view.
Since, then, the composition of the House is of
importance in any account of ideas of political repre-
sentation, it is necessary to understand the relation
of that composition to English society. Speaking
generally, it may be said that the unrepresentative
character of the House has been considerably over-
rated, and that on the whole it represented fairly
well such public opinion as there was in England.
The modern Englishman, under the influence of the
almost mathematical regularity of the franchise, and
the comparative equality of the constituencies, is apt

REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER OF PARLIAMENT 9

to stand aghast at the eccentricities of both franchise
and constituencies in the unreformed House of
Commons ; yet these very eccentricities had helped
to bring the House into a very definite relation with
the state of society. When the period opens, the
yeoman class is still powerful, and- the- House of
Commons still comparatively democratic, but as the
former declines, so the House, by means of the rotten
boroughs, falls under the control of the greater
nobility, who by degrees attain an influence in the
House proportionate to their influence in the country
at large. It may, of course, be argued that, having
once grasped political power, the nobility retained it
some time after their influence in the country had
been undermined by the industrial revolution, and
that, had not some ' legal revolution ' such as the
Reform Bill deprived them of it, they might be
holding it still. But the real reason for this reten-
tion of power by a class declining in its influence
on society is seen by the tremendous accession to
conservative and reactionary sentiment caused by
the French Revolution, and before 1832 the partial
repeal of the Last Determinations Act, the partial or
complete disfranchisement of hopelessly corrupt
boroughs, the non-partisan bestowal of the steward-
ship of the Chiltern Hundreds, and the revival of the
feeling that members had some responsibility to
their constituents and some duties in the House, all
suggest that even had there been no sweeping re-
form in 1832, not only would the touch of supreme
authority required to remedy the grosser and more

io POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

obvious abuses of the electoral system have been
applied, but that by degrees the House would have
conformed itself to the changed condition of the
social system. The social system was always acting
strongly, if imperceptibly, on political representa-
tions. So also it may be definitely asserted that
at no time was the House of Commons unmindful of
public opinion and representatives feared to incur
the distrust and opposition of their constituents,
illustrations of which fact will be found in the careers
of all the great men of the eighteenth century. Thus,
taking a general view, it may be said that the system
was a good one as systems go, for it allowed free play
for effective political forces. In the eighteenth
century, for example, after the decline of the yeo-
men, there was no large class which had political
aspirations and was unable to gain a hearing ; any thi ng
that deserved to be called public opinion was limited
to the opinions of the gentry and the more intelligent
part of the middle classes, so that in this sense the
political machinery provided a sufficient channel for
the really efficient forces of political thought.

This fact, which, for want of a better expression,
may be called the representative character of the
House of Commons, had a great effect on ideas of
political representation. Theorists may desire to
give greater political weight to one class than it has
already, but with the exception of the Radicals, they
seldom think that there are any large classes in
society which ought to be, and are not, represented.
Similarly they may attack rotten boroughs, but it

DEMOCRATIC THEORIES OF THE COMMONWEALTH n

seldom occurs to them to declare that through those
boroughs a class has gained more political power than
it should have. But to this satisfaction, if it can be
so called, in the representative system, there is one
great exception due to the interference of the Crown, *,
for if the King wishes to control Parliament, almost
necessarily he wishes to control it in opposition to
public opinion, and at once theories spring up which
seek to provide a means for the better representation
of the people. So the interference of Charles II. in
elections produced that interesting theory found
among Shaftesbury 's papers, and in the same way the
interference of George III. produced those ideas of
Parliamentary Reform in the direction of the better
representation of public opinion, which brought that
object to a position nearer to its realization than any
it arrived at before the time of the Great Reform Bill.
But with this exception it is fairly correct to say that
from the time of the accession of Charles II. up to
the Reform Bill period theories of political represen-
tation generally recognized the representative char-
acter of the House of Commons, and did not aim so
much at a revolution in the representative system as at
a correction of what might be considered minor faults.

In the period just before the Restoration theories
had been put forward more democratic and advanced
than any propounded by English thinkers for more
than a century afterwards ; and Cromwell had carried
out a measure which effected a considerable redis-
tribution of seats and reorganization of the franchise.

12 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

The cause of this apparent break in the continuity
of political ideas cannot be found in English society
as it then was, for that society was only too ready to
acquiesce in the Restoration Settlement, and must
be sought in the Cromwellian army. This institu-
tion, with no particular relation to English society
and tradition, drawn mainly from a particular class,
and that the most radical in the country, combined
with its ostensible functions that of an overgrown
debating society, in which religious enthusiasm was
raised to the highest point, and was admirably fitted
to take the place of a forcing-house for political
theory. The Levellers in the ' Agreement of the
People ' demanded the biennial election of represen-
tatives and the redistribution of seats. Later on
they are found discussing manhood suffrage, in
which connection Pettus declares that all inhabitants
of the kingdom who had not lost their birthright
should have an equal voice in elections ; and Rains-
borough explains their position by asserting that for
a vote it was not necessary to possess property, for
the reason which God had given to all was sufficient
qualification. Even more strange and out of place
were the proposals made by Harrington and his
followers, which included the adoption of the prin-
ciples of universal suffrage and rotation. But that
these ideas were really produced by the curious con-
dition of the army and rested on a very insecure
basis in the country is evident from their complete
collapse when the Restoration brought about the
disbandment of the troops. In the great enthusiasm

IDEAS OF REPRESENTATION AT RESTORATION 13

for the monarchy, democratic ideas were left in
abeyance ; nor did they revive when this first en-
chantment had passed away, and when the Crown
and the Country Party were involved in a life-and-
death struggle. From the Restoration period the
idealism of the Great Rebellion and the Protectorate
is absent; it is no longer a question of setting up a
Christian democracy, the kingdom of God upon
earth, but the practical issue of the supremacy of
Protestantism over Roman Catholics, and the very
republicans themselves, as Dryden puts it, ' Were
for laying honest David bye/ merely on ' principles
of pure, good husbandry.' A Harringtonian or two
comes out of seclusion to advocate vote by ballot
and rotation, but apart from this, the last really
Radical idea comes from Penn and Sydney, who, in
drawing up the constitution of Pennsylvania, \
arranged for equal electoral districts, vote by ballot,
and manhood suffrage; that is, every man of twenty-
one years of age, and unconvicted of crime, was to
be capable of electing and being elected.

The Restoration had at first much the same effect
on all political theories : the Presbyterians, although
they had gained nothing by the event to which they
had so largely contributed, and although from their
church government they had a developed represen-
tative system before their eyes, contributed no new
outburst of literary activity, and Independents and
Baptists were similarly silent. Yet, as the policy of
Charles II. developed, and the struggle between the
King and the House of Commons became more

,

V

I4 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

acute, political ideas begin to revive. Thus, in 1679,
there was brought forward a bill for the regulation of
the abuses of elections, in which it was proposed that
the electors of the knights of the shire should be
worth £200 in fee, and that in every indenture made
and sealed by any electors it should be inserted that the
person or persons were authorized to serve in Parlia-
ment for the space of two years from the day of the
return of the writ of summons. Such a motion as
this is not to be regarded as a disfranchising act; its
idea was the same as that of many Whig theorists,
that is, to secure that voters shall be men of such
character and property as to be independent of out-
side influence, whilst the idea of shortening the
duration of Parliament was naturally suggested by
the career of the Long Parliament of the Restoration,
and was fulfilled in the Triennial Act of 1694. On
the same lines, but providing a very much fuller and
more interesting theory, is the tract found among
Shaftesbury's papers after his death. Here he
states that the design of choosing members of Parlia-
ment by the people was that no laws should be made,
monies raised, nor any course pursued by those who
sit at the helm, but by the steerage of the people by
their representatives ; for every individual person in
the nation has a natural right to vote in the great
council, and it is only because this is impossible that
they devolve their right upon certain common repre-
sentatives, among whom the whole body of the people
is, or ought to be, represented. In view of the fact
of the rotten boroughs, he contended that Parlia-

SHAFTESBURY'S PROPOSALS FOR REFORM 15

merit was no equal representative of the people ; the
rotten boroughs, to use his own expressive phrase,
' needed a touch of the supreme authority to set
them right, ' and members should be taken from them
and given to the larger towns and to the counties.
Yet in spite of his opinions upon these points, and in
spite of his advocacy of vote by ballot, Shaftesbury
is not really democratic, and, as a practical working
measure, he proposes to substitute for the eccen-
tricities of the franchise a property qualification for
electors equivalent in value to that of the forty
shillings freehold in 1430, and to require a propor-
tionately larger one from candidates ; his reason being
that it is not safe to make over the estates of the
people in trust to men who have no property of their
own, lest their property, in conjunction with an
external temptation, should overcome their morality
and turn them against the interests of their con-
stituents. The great interest in the theory lies not
so much in any intrinsic merit that it may have, but
in the fact that in its main point of view it forecasts
the attitude of the Whigs to representation during the
whole of the period up to 1832. He believes that the
Constitution intended that the House of Commons
should be the representative of the whole nation — in
other words, that it should be a control for the
people — yet, on the other hand, he will not put the
franchise into the hands of the masses, who are too
easily influenced by external influence to make satis-
factory electors, so that the best way in which to
obtain a true representation of the people will be to

16 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

correct the anomalies of the representative system,
and to have both as electors and elected men of such
property as to be independent of any influence what-
ever. It is the attitude of the Whigs of the Reform
Bill a century and a half before they carried their
measure.

For the moment, however, it is impossible to say
that Whigs, or, for that matter, Tories, had any
ideas of political representations which belonged
specifically to their own party. It is true that the
Tory party is usually associated with the idea of the
representation of the land, and the Whig with that
of the representative as opposed to the delegated
character of members of Parliament ; yet, on the one
hand, Locke and Defoe, as well as the Tories, insist
on the representation of the landed interest ; and on
the other the Tories by their action in 1701 to the
Kentish petitioners showed their adhesion to what is
supposed to be the Whig theory . Nor was the attack
on the anomalies of the representative system con-
fined exclusively to one particular party — both are
found demanding the excision of rotten boroughs —
and the denunciation of Locke is not more vigorous
or convincing than the denunciation of Swift. In
fact, as far as the two political parties were concerned,
during the reigns of William III. and Anne, ideas of
political representation were in the melting-pot, and
although towards the end of the latter reign there
are signs of party demarcation on this point, it is not
until the Hanoverian period when the long Whig
regime developed in that party, in spite of the fact

PARTY THEORIES AT THE REVOLUTION 17

that it represented the more progressive elements in
the community, and owed its origin to a great struggle
for political liberty, those conservative and re-
actionary instincts which power naturally produces,
that distinctively party theories grow up. It is
then that the Tories, impatient at the corruption
which was one factor in depriving them of political
power, unite to their conservative prejudices strong
democratic sympathies, which make them for long
the habitual advocates of short Parliaments, Place
Bills and Pension Bills and which in Swift become a
comprehensive Tory theory.

Thus, at the time of the Revolution, Shaftesbury's
ideas are not adopted by either political party,
although at the same time the idea of the represen-
tation of property, or at any rate, of the necessity of
a property qualification for electors and elected, is
taken up in many quarters . This is seen very clearly
in Locke, who, as far as he can be judged from the
scattered evidence in his works, followed Shaftes-
bury rather closely. His denunciation of rotten
boroughs in that * the bare name of a town in which
there remains not so much as the ruins . . . sends as
many representatives to the grand assembly of law-
makers as a whole county, numerous in people and
powerful in riches/ has become almost classic; and
he also would seem to suggest a touch of the supreme
authority, or rather of the Executive, to set them
right. In the Constitutions of Carolina, Locke
insists on the property qualification, and states speci-
fically what Shaftesbury may have had in his mind

18 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

but did not specifically state, that the elector must
have real property. The Parliament is to consist of
the proprietors of the colony or their deputies, the
landgraves and casiques who represent the large
land-owning classes, and one freeholder out of every
precinct who is to be chosen by the freeholders of the
said precinct. No man could be chosen a member
of Parliament who had less than 500 acres of freehold
within the precinct for which he was chosen; nor
should any have a vote in choosing the said member
that had less than fifty acres of freehold within the
said precinct. A new Parliament was to be sum-
moned every two years. One might think this in-
sistence on real property a mere aberration in Locke's
Whiggism, and a proposal made in Parliament
about the year 1700 seems to be much more in ac-
cordance with what are supposed to be Whig ideas.
It suggested that as the assessment of two shillings in
the pound had raised £989,965 from the kingdom,
each member ought to be elected by a constituency
paying roughly £1,930, and thus it might be known
whether a county was over- or under-represented : the
idea obviously being that representation should be
based on taxation. But that some considerable
section of the Whigs really held the idea of the
representation of the land is seen in some extra-
ordinary remarks of Defoe in a Whig treatise on The
Original Power of the People of England, which, if he
were not quite serious in the rest of the treatise,
might be taken as an attempt to reduce the theory
to an absurdity He argues no person had any right

THE REPRESENTATION OF THE LAND 19

to live in England save those to whom England be-
longed ; that the freeholders are the proper owners of
the country, and the other inhabitants only exist on
sufferance ; and thus the only ground upon which the
towns could base their right to representation was the
consent of the freeholders. He even goes on to
draw the conclusion that if the King possessed
all the land in England, he would be an absolute
monarch, and there could be no rights against him.
What conceptions could have produced a theory like
this it is hard to see, but the general idea of the repre-
sentation of land seems to have been derived partly
perhaps from the semi-feudal idea of governmental
rights attached to the possession of land, exemplified
to some extent by the institution of the justices of
the peace, and more immediately from a sort of
physiocratic idea of land as the only basis and, in-
deed, the only real form of wealth, an idea which
appears strongly in the Tory writers Swift and
Bolingbroke. The Tories, in fact, eagerly took up
the idea as a method of increasing the influence of
the country gentlemen, the main support of the
party. In 1696 they made headway with a Bill
making it a prerequisite to service in the House that
a knight of the shire should have £600 a year in land,
and a burgess £300; and in 1710 a measure to this
effect became law. In this connection Bolingbroke
is quoted as saying that the landed men were the true
owners of the political vessel, and the moneyed men
but passengers in it. Swift writes that the House of
Commons was the best representative of the nation

20 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

within memory, and so it had taken care by the
noble Bill of Qualifications that future Parliaments
should be composed of landed men, and that prop-
erty should no longer be at the mercy of those who
had none themselves, or at least what was only
transient and imaginary ; and later, ' there could not
be a truer maxim in our government that the pos-
sessors of the soil are the best judges of what is for
the advantage of the kingdom.'

It is now time to consider a theory of political repre-
sentation which, during the period under considera-
tion, directly and indirectly, probably had a greater
influence on political life than any other — the Whig
theory of representation — a theory which may be
said to have culminated in Burke, but yet which is
found clearly stated in as early a writer as Algernon
Sydney. Though Sydney considers that the legis-
lative power that is exercised in Parliament is essen-
tially and radically in the people from whom their
delegates and representatives have their authority,
yet he thinks the most certain sign of this unlimited
power is that they rely upon the wisdom and fidelity
of their deputies, so as to lay no restriction on them.
Since at the time of the election neither elected nor
electors can foresee what measures will be brought
up, the former must be allowed free powers to do as
they think right, and although it may be convenient
for them to listen to the opinions of their constituents
in order to give more weight to their opinions, they
are not properly obliged to give an account of their
actions. Parliament was not to be a congress of

THE WHIG THEORY 21

ambassadors of different bodies; for the powers of
the cities, counties, and boroughs of England are
regulated by the general law to which they all con-
sented, and by which they are all made members of
one political body. So that it is not ' for Kent,
Sussex, Lewes, or Maidstone, but for the whole nation
that the members chosen in those places are sent to
service in Parliament/ The whole idea of the repre-
sentative as opposed to the delegated character of
members shows how largely the events of the last
forty years had altered the character of Parliament.
The struggle between the Executive and the House of
Commons is now mostly over, and what takes its
place until the time of the Revolution tends rather to
be a struggle between the Crown and the people for
the control of the House of Commons. In the short
and erratic Parliaments of James I. and Charles I.
one can hardly conceive of any difference of opinion
arising between members and their constituents ; but
the careers of the Long Parliaments of the Revolu-
tion and the Restoration had brought the question
into prominence, and had made some decision of it
necessary. But Sydney's theory has in it more than
a mere theoretical justification of existing facts or
forecast in view of future conditions ; it is based on
an idea of the country which he put forward, and in
which the later Whig writers followed him. To him
England was not so much a nation as a series of com-
munities, each with its separate objects and separate
interests; and were members to be delegates, Parlia-
ment would be nothing more than the battle-ground

22 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

of the representatives of these interests. The way
out of the difficulty is that members once elected are
not members for Kent, Sussex, Lewes, or whatever
their constituency may be, but members for England ;
and their judgment of measures is to be decided by
the national welfare, irrespective of local interests.
That this theory was generally accepted by Parlia-
ment is seen in the action of the Tories to the
Kentish Petitioners in 1701, and still more so in the
Septennial Act of 1715. It is, indeed, not to be sup-
posed that the Whigs drew the logical deduction
from this immense arrogation of power on the part
of the Parliament, and the theoretical argument is
kept hidden, while the practical inconvenience of
holding an election at a time of national disturbance
is emphasized; but in 1735, on a motion for the re-
peal of the Septennial Act, the Whig idea is put
forward clearly and distinctly. It is stated that
although members had all a dependence on the
people for their election, after they were chosen and
had taken their seats in the House, the whole power
of the electors was devolved upon them ; so that every
question was to be decided by the good judgment of
the House, and with respect to the public good in
general : and Sir William Yonge, speaking almost in
the same words as Algernon Sydney, goes on to say
that members, after taking their seats in the House,
should cease to have any particular bias for the
county, city, or borough they represented, should
drop not only their dependence upon, but even their
concern for their particular constituency, and look-

THE DELEGATE THEORY 23

ing on themselves as representatives of the whole
body of the Commons of England, should concur with
the rest of the members of the House in what they
judged to be for the general interest of the nation.

It is not remarkable that this theory did not hold
an unquestioned authority in English political life;
no sooner is it put forward than it is combated, and
the justice of its conclusions questioned. The attack
on it is naturally made by means of a theory of dele-
gation. Before Sydney had written the Discourses
on Government, Andrew Marvel had kept up a
relationship with his constituents in Hull by con-
sulting them with regard to his action in all important
matters, which suggested that neither he nor they
would have assented to such a theory as was there
put forward; and on the question of the Kentish
Petitioners a number of tracts, particularly the
Jus Populi Vindicatum, put forward the delegation
theory with considerable force. Members, it con-
sidered, were delegated by their electors to supply
their places in treating of the great and important
matters which were upon the stage, in that juncture
in which Parliament was summoned ; but it was only
upon such matters andnotonotherswhichmightarise
at a later date that they were called upon to judge,
for it might easily happen that a person fit to repre-
sent the electors in one juncture would be judged
unfit in another. This was, in fact, an early instance
of the idea of the mandate — an idea which has been
frequently brought forward, even up to our own
day — to combat what may be considered any undue

24 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

arrogation of power on the part of the members
against the people at large, and the writer went on
to say that delegation imported in its own nature a
power in the person or persons who delegate to revoke
it at his or their pleasure, and it could continue no
longer than during the time and particular occasions
for which it was granted. The deduction drawn
from this was not that members should be mere
delegates, nor that there should be continual refer-
ences to the people on points of importance, but
annual Parliaments which would supply a sufficient
remedy for the grievance without any considerable
inconvenience. Curiously enough, although in this
case the theory is used against the Tories, when it
again appears it is employed by the Tories against
the Whigs, in the debate on the Septennial Act, and
however little one can admire their honesty, there
can be no question as to the skill with which they
put forward a complete theory of the position of the
House of Commons in relation to the electorate, and
demonstrate the logical conclusion to be drawn from
the passing of the Bill. It is, in fact, from the debate
on this Bill and on a motion for its repeal in 1734
that the tradition of Tory democratic sentiment,
emphasized by Disraeli in later days, is drawn, and
not from anything that Bolingbroke either could or
would have laid down as Tory principles. Briefly
put, the Tory position, as expressed in the speeches
of Shippen, Snell, Hutcheson, and others, is that
whilst the assent of King, Lords, and Commons
was necessary for the making of laws, the Commons*

TORY IDEAS 25

being unable to give their personal assent to laws,
constitute certain persons their attorneys with large
general powers. What these attorneys do during
the term of their office, no doubt will bind the Com-
mons, but any extension of that term by themselves
will be tantamount to depriving the Commons of
their right of assent to bills ; for on the one hand they
would cease to be the trustees of the nation and
become their own electors, and on the other there
would be a great danger of unfaithfulness to the
wishes of the people on the part of the attorneys.
In 1734 the theory has become even more extreme.
A view of the constitution is taken up which even if
it had some historical accuracy was hopelessly out of
place in the eighteenth century. Lord N. Somerset
declared that the House of Commons was properly
the Grand Inquest of the nation, its object being
to represent the grievances of the nation to their
sovereign; for this object continual reference to the
constituencies was necessary, and references, said
the noble lord, had often been brought about by the
refusal of the members to agree to the proposals of
the Court until they had consulted their constituents.
Can it be said, then, that there was any Tory
theory of representation, or must one conclude that
these ideas — representation of the land and annual
Parliaments — are merely isolated theories adopted
at different times to strengthen the Tory position in
Parliament or to attack the Whig theory of repre-
sentation ? The answer seems to be supplied by
Swift, who in his short but very remarkable Essay

26 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

on Public Absurdities, combines the extreme Tory
prejudices of his time with considerable democratic
sympathies and thus produces a theory which is well
worth consideration. The qualifications for the fran-
chise which the Dean wishes to impose are two —
namely, membership of the Church of England and
the possession of land of a certain value. He thinks
that the admission of Nonconformists to the ranks of
voters endangers the Church of England, and as the
Church had been established by the nation, it was
an absurdity to give them the franchise, in which
respect he was probably voicing a strong opinion
among the Tories, which had found a partial and
incomplete expression in the Corporation and Occa-
sional Conformity Acts. The land qualification was,
he thinks, the meaning of the Act of 1430, but owing
to the change in the value of money the forty shil-
ling freehold had become utterly capricious, and gave
an opening for an unlimited amount of chicanery;
for it, as a qualification, the Dean considers land
capable of producing a certain amount of some com-
modity— hay, for instance — should be substituted.
The members whom Swift wishes to see in Parlia-
ment are, as one would expect, the country gentle-
men. Hence he blames the custom of throwing the
expense of the election on the candidates, or, as was
often done, on the ministry. The strongest methods
should be employed to leave the electors to their own
choice, which would then consist of the persons with
good estates in the neighbourhood or county, who
would presumably be best acquainted with the

SWIFT'S IDEAS 27

interests of that neighbourhood, and, at any rate,
never of strangers. To choose a representative for
Berwick, whose estate was 'at the Land's End' in
former times, would have been considered a great
solecism ; but how much more so was the system then
in vogue under which so many persons who did not
possess a foot of land in the kingdom were returned ?
Finally, in his own vigorous phraseology, Swift
condemns the rotten boroughs. ' It is likewise
absurd that boroughs decayed are not absolutely
extinguished because the returned members do, in
reality, represent nobody at all, and that several
large towns are not represented, though full of in-
dustrious townsmen who much advance the trade of
the kingdom/ Thus, whilst insisting on freehold
property and membership of the Church of England
as qualifications for electors, Swift's Essay antici-
pates the Reform Bill in three cardinal points — the
abolition of the rotten boroughs, the representation
of the large town populations, and the diminution of
election expenses — and partially in a fourth, the
regulation of the franchise. Nor does Swift stop at
this point ; for in another place he gave his adhesion
to the principle of annual Parliaments on the ground
of the danger of the corruption of members in long
Parliaments. Such a theory as this can hardly be
considered to have rested on mere opposition to
abuses which the Whigs were interested to maintain,
nor did it arise under influence of one great central
idea. It must be taken to mean that Toryism was,
to some extent, opposed to the absurdities of the

28 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

representative system, and was in this sense, if in no
other, democratic.

The year 1760 has been taken as a convenient
point for the division of this subject. It is not that
at this time there is any considerable break in ideas
of political representation; on the contrary, the idea
of the representation of the land and the Whig repre-
sentative theory still continue in vogue among con-
siderable sections of the community and the latter,
at any rate, has yet to reach its culminating point.
Yet no one who has looked into the various theories
which are brought forward at this time can fail to be
struck with a certain indefinable change of tone and
atmosphere which commences with the accession of
George III. The reign of George III. is in many
ways totally different from that of his predecessor.
This difference may be considered as due to one
cause — the House of Commons is getting out of
sympathy with the people. Want of sympathy is
partially apparent in the days of Chatham. ' You
have taught me/ said George II., ' to look for the
sense of my people in other places than the House of
Commons/ Chatham, too, had roused the spirit of
the nation by his brilliant foreign policy, and this
new spirit had a tendency to demand a share in the
government of the country. Yet even so, it must be
remembered that he had at no time any powerful
family connection behind him, and that his strength
lay in the middle classes, who, though mainly un-
represented, made their voices heard in Parliament.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CROWN 29

But Chatham's resignation was brought about by
the interference in the House of a force which had so
long remained in abeyance that its very existence
had almost been forgotten — the influence of the
Crown. For George III., ' a true Briton/ threw over
at once the somnolent acquiescence with which the
earlier Hanoverians had viewed the ascendency of
the Whig nobles, and commenced to form a Court
party under Court influence. The result was an
alienation of the House of Commons froniythe ideas
and sentiments of the_community, more complete
than had been witnessed in any Parliament since the
Restoration, and a consequent rush of ideas of Parlia-
mentary Reform. The obvious remedy, as was seen
by Burke and others in his day, was the removal of
Court influence by the abolition of corruption, and a
return to the old system of virtual representation,
which had up to this time worked so efficiently ; but
Burke had not reckoned with the far-reaching effects
of economic movement. On the assumption that the
House of Commons was representative of the people,
one would expect the demand for Parliamentary
Reform to collapse with the abolition of Crown in-
fluence; but although a decline is very evident, it
does not utterly die down. The fact is, that even
while the struggle against Court influence is going on,
there has commenced that springing up of new
industries and that shifting of populations which
goes by the name of the Industrial Revolution which
undermined the power of the Whig aristocracy and
brought into prominence classes with political

30 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

aspirations which had as yet no voice in the govern-
ment of the country. Thus, instead of dying out,
the demand for Parliamentary Reform only takes
a wider and deeper significance; formerly it was
expected to result in the better representation of
public opinion, now it is a direct attempt at the en-
franchisement of new classes.

With these considerations clearly observed, it is
easy to see into what classes the main ideas of
political representation fall. The Tories, raised to
power under the protecting aegis of George III., are
both unable and unwilling to alter the constitution
of the House and leave political theories severely
alone. The Whigs, conservative and liberal, advo-
cate measures of Parliamentary Reform to secure a
better basis of representation for public opinion.
The Radicals demand the enfranchisement of new
classes. And, as forces begin to change their position,
so do ideas of political representation. On the one
hand George III., after flouting public opinion in the
case of the Middlesex election, subsides into com-
parative acquiescence with it over the American
War, finally appearing as its representative against
the Coalition Ministry, and, as a consequence, the
first demand for Parliamentary Reform dies a
natural death and is succeeded by the question of the
enfranchisement of new classes. Then the French
Revolution effects a complete change in political
ideas, and after it has subsided leaves the Tories, with
the theory which had belonged to the conservative
Whigs, facing the reformers, whether Whig or Radical,

THE FIRST PARLIAMENTARY REFORMERS 31

with the aspirations and ideas of a new England,
which demanded the recognition of its capacity to a
share in the government behind them.

Chatham, one of the first statesmen to suffer
from the interference of the Crown in the House of
Commons, was also one of the first to give his ad-
hesion to the project of Parliamentary Reform.
His ideas on the subject were not decided, and in
many ways were rather retrospective than progres-
sive ; those of a better representation, for instance —
a representation chiefly of the land — are reminiscent
of the Tories and the Revolution Whigs. Property,
and, above all, landed property, . ' the soil/ as he
liked to call it, should be represented, and as the \s
representation of the counties was still preserved
uncorrupted, he advocated an addition to the
number of county members who approached nearest
to the constitutional representation of the country.
The smaller boroughs he called the rotten parts of
the constitution, but he was too cautious to advo-
cate their disfranchisement. On the all-important
question of shortening the duration of Parliaments
he was for long undecided, the advantages of the
limited influence of the Court being counterbalanced
in his mind by the danger of the increase of corrup-
tion; but, as the power of the Court increased, he
declared for the repeal of the Septennial Act on the
ground that the influence of the Crown was so
enormous that the whole Constitution was in danger,
and the erection of some strong bulwark to keep it
in check was a necessity. But the Septennial Act

32 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

was not repealed, and the feeling that the House of
Commons was not representative of the country
continued to spread. Wyvil conceived the idea of
bringing the freeholders of the county of York to-
gether to petition Parliament for reform, and the
idea, when once it was conceived, rapidly spread
from being merely a demand for economy to include
views on shorter Parliaments, the abolition of rotten
boroughs, and the extension of the suffrage. As
the spokesman of this movement in Parliament,
Pitt, in 1782, moved for a committee to inquire into
the state of Parliamentary representation, and
during the course of his speech denounced the
corrupt influence of the Crown, and the whole
system of treasury and nomination boroughs. Under
the Coalition ministry Pitt again brought forward
the subject of Parliamentary Reform in a series of
resolutions asserting that new measures were re-
quired to prevent bribery at elections, that boroughs
should be disfranchised when the majority of voters
could be found to be corrupt, and that additions
should be made to the representation of the counties
and the metropolis. Yet Pitt's victory at the polls
was the death-blow of the movement. The demand
for reform had been brought about by the fact that
the influence of the Crown had caused a temporary
want of coincidence between the sentiments of the
House of Commons and the country and by no great
idea of political representation ; but now this want of
coincidence has ceased to exist, the Crown has been
made comparatively harmless by Burke's economical

BURKE'S VIEWS 33

reform, the ministry is popular, the elections have
been carried on with but little corruption, and the
country is governed in substantial accordance with
its wishes. The Reform Bill which Pitt introduced,
contemplating the disfranchisement of thirty-six
boroughs on their own application, an addition to
the representation of the counties and of London,
and the admission of copyholders to the franchise
in the counties, was rather an attempt to put a
varnish of respectability on the House than a sincere
effort to make the representation of the people more
complete. This really ends the first stage of the
agitation for Parliamentary Reform.

At the time of the Great Reform Bill, Tories and
Reformers stood face to face, each with their own
theories and ideas of the Constitution; yet it has
been noticed that the Tories of the time of the first
two Hanoverians had been as inclined to reform
abuses as the Whigs, whilst those in the early years
of George III. had no clear theory of the constitu-
tion. From whence, then, did the Conservative
theory come ? The answer is easily given. It
came from the more conservative of th$ Whigs, of
whom Burke was the leader in political thought.
Burke is in many ways the most interesting of all
political theorists. He represents, on the one hand,
the culmination of the Whig theory of representa-
tion, and on the other the corner-stone of Conserva-
tis^theory; but to understand how these two ele-
ments came to be allied, it is necessary to under-
stand Burke's whole theory of the Constitution.

3

34 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

No one asserted more strongly than he that the true
end of the legislature was to give a direction, a
form, a technical dress, to the general sense of the
community ; that the Sovereign and House of Lords,
as well as the Commons, must be regarded as only
trus^gesjfor thejpeople; that the Lower House was
not intended to be a control upon the people but a
control for them . He considered that in all disputes
between the people and their rulers, the presumption
was at least on a par in favour of the people ; for
they had no interest in disorder, while the governing
classes had many sinister influences to determine
their policy. In practice, as well as in theory, he
defended the rights of thejpeople. He was, perhaps,
the first statesman who urged that lists of voters
should be published in every important division, in
order that the people might be able to judge of the
action of their representatives. He advocated
Parliamentary_£egprting, strenuously defended the
right of free criticism, supported the disfranchise-
ment of revenue officers, and was the author of one
of the most comprehensive measures ever carried
through Parliament for diminishing the number of
those superfluous places and pensions which was
one of the chief sources of its corruption; yet, in
spite of this, he offered a vigorous opposition to the
demand^ for short JParliaments. urging the horrible
disorder and corruption which such a measure would
produce, as well as the inevitable deterioration of
the character, influence, and competence of Parlia-
ments, that would arise from frequent changes in

BURKE'S THEORY OF THE REPRESENTATIVE 35

the members, and from the breaches in the con-
tinuity of public business. A Place Bill he equally
disliked, as it could not fail to degrade the position
of the legislature by removing from Parliament the
responsible heads of the great civil departments of
the army and navy, and by disconnecting from
Parliamentary interest the greater part of those
who held civil employment. But it is when he
attacks the delegation theory of representation that
his attitude becomes most clearly defined. The
representative, as he told the electors of Bristol in
1774, owed his constituents not his industry only, but
also his judgment, and he betrayed instead of serv-
ing them if he sacrificed it to their opinion. To
deliver an opinion was the right of all men, that of
constituents was a weighty and respectable opinion,
which a representative ought always to rejoice to
hear, and which he ought most seriously to consider;
but authoritative instructions, mandates which the
member was bound blindly and implicitly to obey,
to vote and to argue for, though contrary to the
clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,
were things utterly unknown to the laws of the land,
and arose from a fundamental mistake concerning
the whole order and tenor of the Constitution.
Parliament was not a congress of ambassadors from
different and hostile interests ; it was a deliberative
assembly of one nation with one interest, that of
the whole, where not local purpose?, not local preju-
dices ought to guide, but the general good resulting
from the general reason of the whole. And here he

36 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

brings out the idea expressed in almost the same
words by Algernon Sydney and Sir W. Yonge.
' You choose a member indeed, but when you have
chosen him, he is not a member for Bristol; he is a
member of Parliament/ This speech at Bristol
gives the clearest indication as to Burke's ideas of
political representation which can be found in his
writings, and it gives an indication of the reason for
his opposition to all measures of Parliamentary
Reform. The fact is, that though he wishes the
House of Commons to be a control for the people,
yet he feels that the people, or, for that matter, the
electors, are not capable to decide on the details of
legislation. He wishes the general will to prevail,
but he has not the slightest faithina general assembly
of the people, or, for that matter, in a congress of
delegates as an organ to voice that will. England,
in fact, to him, as to all the Whig representation
theorists, was a collection, not of individuals, but of
associations or interests, and in any assembly the
tendency would be for these associations to be
diametrically opposed to one another; in a word,
for sinister interests to prevail over the general will.
From this impasse there is one means of escape —
that is, through the Constitution, an institution of
almost superhuman ingenuity, which exists solely
to bring the general will into action and record its
decrees. The Constitution, as.Burke saw it, did not
exist to give each man a voice in the government of
the country ; the general will was far too intangible
to be voiced in that way; the constituencies were

BURKE'S THEORY OF THE CONSTITUTION 37

not the people, they were only representative of
the people and of the various interests of the country.
The fact that there were large populations in the
Northern towns unrepresented in Parliament did
not appeal to Burke in the least . Birmingham might
have no members, but Bristol had; and Bristol, as
a constituency, he considered not only as the western
city of that name, but also as a representative of
the trading interest of which Birmingham formed a
part, and it would return not so much members for
Bristol as members for that trading interest. But
even so, the danger of the existence of Parliament
merely as a congress of the ambassadors of rival
interests must be guarded against, and to this end
it is determined that it is the duty of each member
to receive no instructions or mandates, to pay no
more regard to the opinion of his constituents than
to the opinion of any other respectable and intelli-
gent people, and to determine his vote on each in-
dividual question as it came before him by his judg-
ment and conscience, and in accordance with what
he thought to be the national interest. Thus the
Constitution was sacred to Burke as an institution
in which the various interests of the country typified
in the constituencies were melted and remoulded
until finally they were recast in the shape of the
general will, and such changes as he advocated were
in the nature of cleaning the wheels of the machine
rather than of any alteration in its structure. Our
representation, he thought, was nearly as perfect
as the necessary imperfection of human affairs and

38 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

human creatures would allow it to be, and it should
be a subject of prudent and honest use, and thankful
enjoyment, and not of captious criticism or rash
experiment.

It is easy to see in what Burke 's fundamental
mistake lay. No doubt, as opposed to the earlier
Parliamentary Reformers, he was justified in refusing
to assent to any structural alteration in the Consti-
tution merely to secure the elimination of Crown
interference. The Constitution had represented the
country well enough in the past, and could do so
again, were the means of Crown interference, in the
shape of pensions and sinecures, removed; for the
treasury boroughs only represented the legitimate
royal interest in the House. What he failed to
see was the significance of the industrial revolution
which was going on, even at the time of his attack
on royal influence in the Commons. No doubt he
would have been the first to agree to the idea that
the Constitution had developed in the past along
with the development of social factors, but he did
not seem to realize that society was still developing,
that the importance of some interests, rapidly being
undermined in the country, was overestimated in
the representative system, whilst other interests
rapidly growing into prominence were not repre-
sented at all. In fact, structural alterations in the
constitution of the House of Commons were neces-
sary to bring that body into harmony with the new
society which was springing up in England. Burke's
theory, in fact, is typical of a conservatism which,

PALEY AND THE CONSERVATIVES 39

without being sufficiently obscurantist to regret
past developments, yet looks askance at all future
progress and desires nothing better than to be left
in the peaceful possession of what has been already
gained. It was this idea of a divine right of things
as they are which was the foundation of what theory
there was in the opposition to the Reform Bill.

The development of Conservative theory was
naturally towards the justification of the details of
a Constitution the general principles of which Burke
had already defended, and as such it is well illus-
trated by Paley. Paley does indeed recognize that /
there is something which needs justification in the
Constitution, and he sets out to defend it purely on
its results, and on no principle of right or prescrip-
tion. The members of Parliament, he would say,
are as capable men and as good representatives of
the people as could be selected; why, then, change
a system which produces such good results ? But
perhaps it would be better to examine his theory,
which may be taken as an example of Conservative
theory more closely. Every district and province
of the Empire, he says, enjoys the privilege of
choosing representatives informed of its interest
and circumstances, and so entitled to communicate
this information to the national council, whilst, by
annexing the right of voting for members of the
House of Commons to different qualifications in
different places, each order and profession of men
in the community becomes virtually represented;
thus the irregularities of the distribution of the con-

40 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

stituencies and of the franchise are justified on the
ground that they secure the virtual representation
of all the districts and all the classes in the Empire.
But, as one would expect, Paley lays still more
weight on the quality of the men elected. The
elections are so connected with the influence of
landed property as to afford a certainty that a
number of men of great estates will be returned to
Parliament, and are also so modified that men the
most eminent and successful in their professions are,
on account of their wrealth and position, the most
likely to be sent to Parliament as representatives.
These representatives will be as heterogeneous as
the varying franchises by which they are elected,
and the variety of interests and character among
them, added to the temporary duration of their
power and the change of men which each new elec-
tion will produce, will prevent, on the one hand, any
subjection to external dictation, and, on the other,
any undue arrogation of rights as against the people.
At the same time, the proceedings and debates of
Parliament and the parliamentary conduct of each
representative are known to the people at large, and
the representative is so far dependent upon the con-
stituent and political importance upon public favour,
that a member of Parliament cannot take a more
direct route to advancement in the State than that
of bringing forward and supporting laws for the
public welfare. Rotten boroughs may be a theo-
retical anomaly, but they secure the representation
of property; often men of conspicuous ability sit

BLACKSTONE AND THE LIBERAL WHIGS 41

for them, and, after all, it is not of much importance
who elects, as long as the men most likely to know
and to promote the public interest are actually
returned. Paley's theory is the natural result of
the use of Burke's ideas by men who were without
his political genius. His central defence of the Con-
stitution as the instrument to voice the general will
is allowed to pass unobserved, and the Constitution
is now used only to secure, with more or less ac-
curacy, the representation of the various interests
which both he and the Tories agreed went to make
up England.

The Conservative theory only existed to oppose
the efforts of a large section of people, who, for want
of a better name, may be called the Reformers, a
term which includes Whigs, Radicals, Revolutionists
and Utilitarians, each of whom have a separate
motive for attacking the constitution as it then
existed, and a separate theory with which they might
attack it ; but it is not proposed to deal separately
with these ideas, and for the purposes of this essay
two divisions will suffice — Whig and Radical.

The Liberal Whig theory may be considered,
curiously enough, to start from Blackstone ; curiously,
that is, in view of the general impression of Black-
stone which Bentham's criticism has left, but a
very cursory view of his theory of the Constitution
will be enough to show that he is not as conserva-
tive as he is made out to be, although, from the
nature of the Commentaries, he was obliged to occupy
himself chiefly with the theory of the Constitution

42 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

as it then was. The Commons, he says, consist of
all such men of any property in the kingdom as have
not seats in the House of Lords, every one of whom
has a voice in Parliament either personally or by his
representatives, for in a free State every man who is
supposed to be a free agent ought to be in some
measure his own governor. The reason for a prop-
erty qualification for electors is that such persons
may be excluded as are in so mean a situation as
to have no will of their own ; for if these persons had
votes they would be tempted to dispose of them
under some undue influence, such as that of a great
or wealthy man, who would thereby gain a larger
share in elections than is consistent with the general
liberty. If it were probable that every man would
give his vote freely and without reference to any
external pressure, then upon the true theory and
principle of liberty, every member of the community,
however poor, ought to have a vote in electing those
delegates to whose charge is committed his property,
his liberty, and his life; but as this can hardly be
expected in persons of indigent fortunes or in those
who are under the immediate control of others, all
popular States have been obliged to establish certain
qualifications, whereby some who are suspected to
have no will of their own are excluded from voting
in order to set the more independent members of
society on an equality one with the other. Only
such are excluded as have no will of their own, for
there is hardly a free agent to be found who is not
entitled to a vote in some place or other in the king-

THE LIBERAL WHIGS 43

dom, and although the richest man has only one
vote at one place, yet if his property be at all diffused,
he will have a right to vote at more places than one,
and so will have many representatives. So much
for Blackstone's ideas on the franchise; yet at the
end there comes the startling admission that though
this is the spirit of the Constitution, it is not so per-
fect in practice, and if any alteration could be wished
in the frame of Parliaments, it would be in the
direction of a more complete representation of the
people; and again, though he thinks that the knights
of the shire are the representatives of the land-
holding interest, and the boroughs of the trading
interest, the idea of interests takes quite a subor-
dinate place in his theory, and he considers that it
was a mistake of the Crown to continue to summon
members from the deserted boroughs and not to
summon them from the newer towns. On the
question of the relation of members to their con-
stituents, however, he is as clear and decided as
Burke himself. Although the representatives are
chosen by a number of minute and separate districts,
and each member by a particular constituency, yet
when elected and returned, they serve for the whole
realm; for the end of their coming thither is not
particular but general, not barely to advantage
their constituents but the commonwealth, and there-
fore they are not like deputies in the United Pro-
vinces, bound to consult with or to take the advice
of their constituents on any particular point unless
they themselves think it advisable to do so. Black-

44 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

stone thus puts forward the more important ideas
which influenced the Whig Reformers. Their main
idea was to restore the old spirit of the Constitution
and to secure a better representation for the people ;
but they felt that after the removal of the anomalies
of the representative system this end would be best
obtained by limiting the franchise to that section
of the community which, by its possession of property,
was comparatively independent of external influence ;
and again, although they clung to the theory of the
representative character of members, they were very
little affected by the idea of interests. In this con-
nection it is interesting to notice how much both
Blackstone and the Whig Reformers had been antici-
pated by Shaftesbury, who also postulates the demo-
cratic spirit of the Constitution, and wishes to restore
it by abolishing rotten boroughs, and by insisting
on a large property qualification.

Reason has been given why the first Parliamentary
Reformers are not included among the Liberal and
Reforming Whigs ; their idea was merely to eliminate
the influence of the Crown, and when this was
effected, they ceased to agitate for reform. When
Pitt's Bill failed, however, the cause of reform was
taken up by Flood, who, in 1790, on introducing a
motion to add 100 members elected by the resident
householders of the counties, made a speech which
definitely points to Liberal Whig ideas. Though he
still uses the danger of Crown interference as an argu-
ment for reform, the main point in his speech is that,
as then constituted, apart from any external in-

THE LIBERAL WHIGS 45

fluence, the House of Commons did not represent
the people. The real remedy was to put more in-
fluence into the hands of the middle class, a class
which, although very feebly represented in English
politics, was yet more likely than any other to
exercise political power, soberly, honestly, and in-
dependently. Property might, indeed, be a necessary
ingredient in elective power — that is to say, the fran-
chise should not go beyond property, but at the
same time it should be as nearly commensurate with
it as possible — and an increase in the number of
constituents was a necessity to the spirit of liberty.
Much the same ideas were behind the ' Society of
the Friends of the People/ who for so long during
the period of the repression of revolutionary ideas,
and the vigorous hostility of almost the whole nation,
kept the flag of moderate Parliamentary Reform fly-
ing. In 1793 two petitions were presented. One,
from Birmingham., attacking influence and corruption,
and denouncing a system whereby members were
returned to Parliament who had no real warrant to
represent the people, declared that the House of
Commons ought to be freely elected by the commons
of England; the other, from the Friends of the
People, complained that the House of Commons did
not represent the people, and that its unrepresenta-
tive character constituted a grievance which ought
to be redressed. The representation, it said, was
disproportionate, and the franchise was based upon
no principle of right. In 1795 the Friends of the
People adopted and published a plan of reform which

46 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

recommended that every tax-paying householder
should vote in an election for one member, that
elections should all be held on one day, that wages
should be paid to members from the general revenue,
and that the duration of Parliaments should be
shortened. And in connection with this may be
taken some remarks of Charles James Fox, who,
although he was not a member of the Society, yet
sympathized very strongly with its objects. He
said that it was demonstrated beyond the power
of subterfuge to question that genuine representa-
tion could alone give solid power, and that for the
Government to be made strong it was necessary for
the people to make the Government. He depre-
cated universal suffrage on account of a supposed
want of independence in the voters, and thought that
the best plan was that by which the greatest number
of independent voters should be brought into action;
meanwhile, by making the people of England a
constituent part of the Government of England,
nothing more would be effected than the restoration
of the ancient edifice designed and framed by
our ancestors. From the Friends of the People
and Charles James Fox, the moderate reforming
movement of the Liberal Whigs passes under
the leadership of Lord John Russell, whose
successive resolutions kept the movement before
Parliament until it reached its consummation in
1832.

But if we look for any great idea of political repre-
sentation which led the Whig Reformers to attack

THE IDEAS OF THE REFORM BILL 47

the existing condition of things, and in accordance
with which they formulated their plan of reform,
the search will be in vain. Much as it has been said,
though perhaps rather unjustly, of the barons who
forced Magna Charta upon John, that they were
guided, not by any great ideas of liberty or consti-
tutional progress, but by a number of small and
very practical motives, so it might be said of the men
who forced the Reform Bill on the House of Lords,
that their object was to remedy some very obvious
and very practical abuses, and not to bring the Con-
stitution into agreement with any particular prin-
ciple of right. ' I am at a loss/ said a member of
the Tory party, ' to perceive the general principle
on which our reforming cabinet have proceeded;
they might have taken for their basis of representa-
tion, property, taxation, or population, but they
have selected neither/ He might well be at a loss;
there was no general principle on which the Reformers
could be said to act. On the one hand they clung
to the idea of the representative character of
members and refused to do anything to minimize it
by shortening the duration of Parliament; on the
other, they dropped the idea of interests on which,
from the time of Algernon Sydney, the Whig repre-
sentative theory had been based. On the one hand
they put forward the idea of Reform as necessary to
secure the representation of the people, and on the
other they limited the application in practice of
this principle by a fairly large property qualification
on the merely practical ground that property was

48 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

necessary to secure the independence of the voter.
Two considerations, however, will partially explain
the theory of the Reform Bill. The Reformers did
not regard themselves as innovators in any sense of
the term, but as the restorers of the old spirit of the
Constitution, enveloped and lost amidst the accre-
tions and impurities which had grown up around it,
and which they wished to remove, and their main
idea was the representation of the middle class.
It is no doubt disappointing to a writer on ideas on
political representation not to be able to explain
such an important epoch in the history of the repre-
sentative system as that of the Reform Bill in the
light and growth of the development and ultimate
success of some great idea ; but the fact remains that
the abolition of the abuses of the old system was not
due to any such idea, and that what theory there
was, was merely invented by the Reformers to justify
their reforms.

The Radical ideas of political representation have
up to now been omitted, somewhat unjustifiably
perhaps, in view of the fact that the Radicals un-
questionably had some influence on the Whig Re-
formers ; but nevertheless Radical thinkers are essen-
tially different from those of the two great political
parties; they desire neither to maintain nor to re-
form the representative system, but to revolutionize
it. The birth, or, as one would prefer to call it, the
resurrection of Radicalism, is generally traced to the
year 1769, the year of the formation of the great
democratic society of the Bill of Rights, a fact which

THE EARLY RADICALS 49

strikingly illustrates the real change in political
opinions, which takes place in response to the
change in political conditions about 1760. Under
the auspices of this society a long series of tests were
prepared to be offered to candidates at elections,
and among other things every candidate was re-
quired to aim at a full and equal representation of
the people in Parliament, annual Parliaments, and
the exclusion from the House of Commons of every
member who accepted any place or pension. One
of the leading doctrines of the new society was that
a member of Parliament was simply a delegate, who
must regulate his political career entirely according
to the wishes of his constituents, and at a great
meeting of February, 1769, Beckford declared that
if he received instructions from his constituents
directing him to take a course opposed to his con-
victions, he would consider himself bound to conform
to their desires, and would not oppose his judgment
to that of some 6,000 of his fellow-citizens. So
great an influence had the society that the habit
of sending instructions to members became very
popular among the constituencies, and it was this
as much as anything which caused Burke's famous
declaration at Bristol in 1774. The formation of
the society was very largely due to the resentment
felt at the action of the House of Commons on the
question of the Middlesex election, and Wilkes was
one of its most prominent members and its voice in
Parliament. In accordance with this capacity, in
1776 he moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the

4

50 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

just and equal representation of the people in Parlia-
ment, and the speech in which he supported the
resolution, besides being an important declaration
of representative principles, points to the fact that
English Radicals, before they were affected by
Revolutionary ideas, had a sober and intelligent
policy. What they wanted, as Wilkes put it, was
an English Parliament, to speak the free and un-
biassed sense of the body of English people and
of every man in the community. The meanest
mechanic, the poorest peasant and day-labourer,
had important rights respecting his personal liberty,
that of his wife and children, and his property,
however inconsiderable. ' Poor as well as rich, men
of great estate and men of none, should have a share
in making the laws which affect their lives and
happiness/ and to effect this Wilkes proposed to
give a free vote to every free agent, to disfranchise
rotten boroughs, to enfranchise the newer towns,
and to arrange shorter Parliaments, and a Place and
Pension Bill. Radicalism is often said to be based
on the idea of the fundamental rights of individuals ;
but this is not the case with the early Radicals, and
their point of view, as expressed by Cartwright,
that the greatest possible stake in the country is not
wealth and property but wife and children, however
revolutionary it may have been when it was first
propounded, seems in these more enlightened days
eminently reasonable and intelligent, and what really
distinguishes them from the Whig Reformers is the
comprehensiveness of their schemes, which imply

THE REVOLUTIONARIES 51

not only a desire to reform abuses, but a definite
democratic theory on which the reform was to be
based. But the advent of revolutionary ideas
changed Radicalism for the worse. Parliamentary
Reform was lost sight of as a lesser change, which
the greater, the securing of sovereignty to the
people, would necessarily involve, and thus the
Radicals lost touch with practical politics and with
the real political opinion of the country. Sweeping
motions of reform, such as that of the Duke of
Richmond, involving annual Parliaments and man-
hood suffrage, were all that they would tolerate.
There is consequently little importance to be attached
to their ideas of political representation, even if
they can be said to have had any. ' What is govern-
ment/ says Paine, ' more than a management of
the affairs of the nation ?' ' However it may have
been usurped, it is not, and from its nature cannot
be, the property of any particular man or family,
but of the whole community ; so that the nation has
an inherent right to abolish any government that
it finds inconvenient, and to establish such as
accords with its interest/ Paine himself, though
an ardent advocate of regularity in the franchise
and in the size of the electoral districts, did not go
to the extremes of democracy, and was inclined to
think that the government which the nation would
find most to its interest was one in which the fran-
chise was limited by a small property qualification,
and members of Parliament held something of a
representative character; but he was almost alone

52 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

in his conservatism, and demands for universal
suffrage, annual Parliaments, and delegates, from
the various revolutionary societies, meet one with
wearisome iteration. The influence of this style of
thought on England and on English political life
does not seem to have been large, and, after the
policy of repression was inaugurated by Pitt's
ministry, became practically non-existent. The
Radicalism which survives is of the earlier kind,
although no doubt tinged and influenced to some
considerable extent by revolutionary ideas and rein-
forced by thinkers of another school.

This other school is the school of Bentham, and
the philosophical Radicals. Bentham himself was
primarily a legal reformer, and it was only when he
discovered, somewhat to his own astonishment, that
his ideas on legal reform were not going to be ac-
cepted, that he realized the strength of Conservatism
in the country, and turned to attack it by means of
Parliamentary Reform. Thus, in his Plan of Parlia-
mentary Reform, and still more in James Mill's
* Essay on Government ' in the Encyclopedia Britan-
nica, there appears a complete view of the ideas of
the philosophical Radicals on political representa-
tion. They start from two primary principles — the
self-preference principle, in virtue of which each
man will desire and seek after his own greatest
happiness, and the ' greatest happiness ' principle, in
virtue of which the right and proper end of govern-
ment is the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. The deduction from these two principles

THE UTILITARIANS 53

is quite obvious. The actual end of any Government
will be the happiness of the governors; of an aristo-
cratical Government, the happiness of the aristoc-
racy ; of a monarchical Government, the happiness of
the monarch; and thus, to secure the greatest happi-
ness of the greatest number it is only necessary to
provide for the Government of all, and so to procure
an identity of interest between governors and
governed. In this way they more or less assumed
that there was such a thing as an average man, who
would form an independent opinion upon legislative
questions, vote for men who would apply his opinions,
and see that his representatives performed his
bidding honestly. The people will always know
their own interests, and will naturally choose mor-
ally apt agents, whilst men who wish to be chosen
will desire truly to become morally apt, for they
can only recommend themselves by showing their
desire to serve the general. Thus, democracy being
once established, with its paraphernalia of universal
suffrage, annual Parliaments and deputies, there is
no necessity to inquire further in the matter, for the
Constitution will work exactly as it is intended to ;
and that there should be any need to inquire into
the social instincts which lie behind all political
action does not occur to them for a moment. In
this respect, indeed, Bentham shows considerable
inconsistency when, in his fear of the corruption of
delegates, he inserts a provision that members are
not to be re-eligible until after an interval ; for, on
his own showing, such corruption was impossible;

54 POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

but in another direction he was inclined to carry out
his theory to its logical conclusion, and after discuss-
ing the question of female suffrage, he leaves it un-
decided and refuses to pronounce against it. An
agreement was arrived at between the ordinary
Radicals and the Benthamites, and voiced in Sir
Francis Burdett's resolutions of 1818. The preamble
contained the proposition that no adequate security
for good government can have place but by means
of, and in proportion to, a community of interest
between the governors and the governed, and the
resolutions embody demands for a free and compre-
hensive suffrage, equal electoral districts, and an-
nual Parliaments, although Burdett himself did not
believe in the delegation principle. Naturally there
was no Radical thought in favour of the Reform Bill,
and on the eve of it in 1831 a paper is issued, the
forecast of the people's charter, which states the
views of the extremists. It is practically a declara-
tion of the rights of man. All men are born equally
free and have certain natural inherent and inalien-
able rights; every man who is twenty-one years of
age, who is of sound mind, and is not tainted by
crime, has a right, either by himself or by his repre-
sentative, to a free voice in determining the neces-
sity and incidents of public contributions; the
method of voting should be by ballot, and intellec-
tual fitness and moral worth, rather than property,
should be the qualification of representatives. And
so we leave the Radicals looking beyond the
Reform Bill to later developments in the Constitu-

tion in which their ideas have been or are being
realized.

As the English Constitution proceeded and de-
veloped in an orderly manner, so ideas of political
representation which follow it closely through its
course, proceed and develop. What break there is
to be found in the development of either — and it is
idle to deny that the ' legal revolution ' of the Re-
form Bill is such a break — is mainly due to causes,
the origin of which are not to be found in England,
and it is in the French Revolution rather than in
the English aristocracy that the reason for that
' legal revolution ' will be found. Throughout the
period the practical nature of English theory is
strongly in evidence, and there is little attempt to
reform Parliament by the application of any ab-
stract principle of right. Whilst, on the one hand,
the Conservatives take their stand in defence of the
Constitution on the ground of the excellence of the
results, the Liberals turn rather to the idea of re-
storing to it its original spirit, and wish to bring the
Parliament once again into accordance with the
idea which Sir Thomas Smith expressed so well in
the days of Elizabeth. ' For every Englishman is
intended to be there present, either in person or by
procuration and attorneys, of what pre-eminence,
state, dignity or quality soever he be, from the prince,
be he King or Queen, to the lowest person of England.
And the consent of Parliament is taken to be every
man's consent.' It is on this idea that the Reformers,

56 APOLITICAL V&ESR'EBENTATION IN PARLIAMENT

from Shaftesbury to Lord John Russell, base their
argument, and it is to this conception that, in spite
of their illogicality and inconsistency, they are always
working back.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The following are the more important references to the
subject:

Modern Works.

VEITCH: Genesis of Parliamentary Reform.

PORRITT: The Unreformed House of Commons.

LECKY: England in the Eighteenth Century.

GOOCH : English Democratic Ideas in the Sixteenth Century.

LESLIE STEPHEN: English Utilitarians.

KENT: English Radicals.

Tracts, Pamphlets, Speeches, etc.

Parliamentary Debates, especially on the Septennial Act and
the motion for its repeal in 1734, also on Parliamentary
Reform after 1760, although the greater part of the immense
mass of matter on the subject is of little value.

Somers Tracts, for Shaftesbury 's paper.

Tracts of William III., for Jura Populi Anglicani.

Burke's Speeches, especially that of 1774 at Bristol.

DEFOE: Original Power of the People of England.

Original Works.

LOCKE: Second Treatise on Civil Government.
LOCKE: Constitutions of Carolina.
SYDNEY: Discourse on Government.
SWIFT: Essay on Public Absurdities.
BLACKSTONE : Commentaries .
BURKE: Thoughts on the Present Discontents.
BURKE: Reflections on the French Revolution.
PAINE: Rights of Man.
PALEY: Moral and Political Philosophy.
BENTHAM : Fragment on Government.
BENTHAM: Plan of Parliamentary Reform.

JAMES MILL: Essay on Government (Encyclopedia Britannica,
edition of 1820).

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