The Representation of the People Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 45), also known as the Reform Act 1832, Great Reform Act or First Reform Act, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to reform the electoral system in England and Wales and to expand the male franchise, but excluded women from voting. The measure was brought forward by the Whig government of Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey.
The legislation granted the right to vote to a broader segment of the male population by standardising property qualifications, extending the franchise to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers, and all householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more. The act also reapportioned constituencies to address the unequal distribution of seats. The act formally excluded women from voting, as a voter was defined in the Act as a male person; prior to 1832 there were occasional, rare, instances of women voting. The act of England and Wales was accompanied by the Scottish Reform Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 65) and Irish Reform Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 88).
The passage of the Act was very difficult. The first version advanced through the legislative process, but narrowly failed in the House of Commons. The King dissolved parliament at the Prime Minister's request, and the Whigs won a landslide victory in the subsequent election. A second version then passed the House of Commons with a 100 vote majority, but was defeated in the House of Lords. A third version was weakened by procedural maneuvers, and the Prime Minister resigned. Popular unrest spread through the country, leading to the Days of May, and pushing the country to brink of revolution. The Whigs gained the King's support to threaten to pack the House of Lords with Whigs, which caused the opposition to back down, and the final passage of the bill.
The historiography of the Reform Act is marked by longstanding debates over its causes, nature, and impact. Scholars have long grappled with whether it was a radical modernising movement that expanded democracy by widening the franchise or a conservative measure intended to preserve aristocratic rule by making necessary concessions.
The act was repealed by the Representation of the People Act 1948. The electoral system in the UK is now defined principally by the Representation of the People Act 1983 and the Electoral Administration Act 2006.
After the Acts of Union 1800 became law on 1 January 1801, the unreformed House of Commons comprised 658 members, of whom 513 represented England and Wales. There were two types of constituency: counties and boroughs. County members were supposed to represent landholders, while borough members were supposed to represent mercantile and trading interests.
Counties
Counties were historical national subdivisions established between the 8th and 16th centuries. They were not merely parliamentary constituencies: many components of government (as well as courts and the militia) were organised along county lines.
Boroughs
Parliamentary boroughs in England ranged in size from small hamlets to large cities, partly because they had evolved haphazardly. The earliest boroughs were chosen in the Middle Ages by county sheriffs, and even a village might be deemed a borough. Many of these early boroughs (such as Winchelsea and Dunwich) were substantial settlements at the time of their original enfranchisement, but later went into decline, and by the early 19th century some only had a few electors, but still elected two MPs; they were often known as rotten boroughs. Of the 70 English boroughs that Tudor monarchs enfranchised, 31 were later disfranchised.
The franchise
Before the reform, most members of Parliament nominally represented boroughs. However, the number of electors in a borough varied widely, from a dozen or so up to 12,000. The criteria for qualification for the franchise also varied greatly among these boroughs, from the requirement to own land, to merely living in a house with a hearth sufficient to boil a pot.
Statutes passed in 1430 and 1432, during the reign of Henry VI, standardised property qualifications for county voters. Under these Acts, all owners of freehold property or land with an annual value of at least forty shillings in a particular county were entitled to vote in that county. This requirement, known as the forty shilling freehold, was never adjusted for inflation of land value; thus the amount of land one had to own in order to vote gradually diminished over time. The franchise was restricted to men by custom rather than statute; on rare occasions women had been able to vote in parliamentary elections as a result of property ownership. Nevertheless, the vast majority of people were not entitled to vote; the size of the English county electorate in 1831 has been estimated at only 200,000 and 400,000 enfranchised Englishmen overall. Furthermore, the sizes of the individual county constituencies varied significantly. The smallest counties, Rutland and Anglesey, had fewer than 1,000 voters each, while the largest county, Yorkshire, had more than 20,000. Those who owned property in multiple constituencies could vote multiple times. Not only was this typically legal (since there was usually no need for a property owner to live in a constituency in order to vote there) it was also feasible, even with the technology of the time, since polling was usually held over several days.
In boroughs the franchise was far more varied. There were broadly six types of parliamentary boroughs, as defined by their franchise:
- Boroughs in which freemen were electors;
- Boroughs in which the franchise was restricted to those paying scot and lot, a form of municipal taxation;
- Boroughs in which only the ownership of a burgage property qualified a person to vote;
- Boroughs in which only members of the corporation were electors (such boroughs were perhaps in every case "pocket boroughs", because corporation members were usually "in the pocket" of a wealthy patron);
- Boroughs in which male householders were electors (these were usually known as "potwalloper boroughs", as the usual definition of a householder was a person able to boil a pot on his/her own hearth);
- Boroughs in which freeholders of land had the right to vote.
Some boroughs had a combination of these varying types of franchise, and most had special rules and exceptions, so many boroughs had a form of franchise that was unique to themselves.
The largest borough, Westminster, had about 12,000 voters (and two seats until 1885), while many of the smallest, usually known as "rotten boroughs", had fewer than 100 each and at least one seat each. The most famous rotten borough was Old Sarum, which had 13 burgage plots that could be used to "manufacture" electors if necessary—usually around half a dozen was thought sufficient. Other examples were Dunwich (32 voters), Camelford (25), and Gatton (7).
Pocket boroughs
Many constituencies, especially those with small electorates, were under the control of rich landowners, and were known as nomination boroughs or pocket boroughs, because they were said to be in the pockets of their patrons. Most patrons were noblemen or landed gentry who could use their local influence, prestige, and wealth to sway the voters. This was particularly true in rural counties, and in small boroughs situated near a large landed estate. Some noblemen even controlled multiple constituencies: for example, the Duke of Norfolk controlled eleven, while the Earl of Lonsdale controlled nine. Writing in 1821, Sydney Smith proclaimed that "The country belongs to the Duke of Rutland, Lord Lonsdale, the Duke of Newcastle, and about twenty other holders of boroughs. They are our masters!" T. H. B. Oldfield stated in his Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland that, out of the 514 members representing England and Wales, about 370 were selected by nearly 180 patrons. A member who represented a pocket borough was expected to vote as his patron ordered, or else lose his seat at the next election. Voters in some constituencies resisted outright domination by powerful landlords, but were often open to corruption.
Effects of the French Revolution
Support for parliamentary reform in Britain plummeted following the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. The revolution led many British politicians to become steadfastly opposed to major political change. Despite this, several radical groups were established in Britain to agitate for reform. A group of Whigs led by the Earl of Lauderdale and Charles Grey founded an organisation advocating parliamentary reform in 1792. This group, known as the Society of the Friends of the People, included 28 MPs. In 1793, Grey presented to the House of Commons a petition from the Friends of the People, outlining abuses of the system and demanding change. He did not propose any specific scheme of reform, but merely a motion that the House inquire into possible improvements. Parliament's reaction to the French Revolution was so negative that even this request for an inquiry was rejected by a margin of almost 200 votes. Grey tried to raise the subject again in 1797, but the House again rebuffed him by a majority of over 150.
Other notable pro-reform organisations included the Hampden Clubs (named after John Hampden, an English politician who fought on the Parliamentarian side during the English Civil War) and the London Corresponding Society (which consisted of workers and artisans). But the "Radical" reforms supported by these organisations (for example, universal suffrage) found even less support in Parliament. For example, when Sir Francis Burdett, chairman of the London Hampden Club, proposed a resolution in favour of universal suffrage, equally sized electoral districts, and voting by secret ballot to the House of Commons, his motion found only one other supporter (Lord Cochrane) in the entire House.
Despite such setbacks, popular pressure for reform remained strong. In 1819, a large pro-reform rally was held in Birmingham. Although the city was not entitled to any seats in the Commons, those gathered decided to elect Sir Charles Wolseley as Birmingham's "legislatorial representative". Following their example, reformers in Manchester held a similar meeting to elect a "legislatorial attorney". Between 20,000 and 60,000 (by different estimates) attended the event. The protesters were ordered to disband; when they did not, the Manchester Yeomanry suppressed the meeting by force. Eighteen people were killed and several hundred injured in what later became known as the Peterloo Massacre. In response, the government passed the Six Acts, measures designed to quell further political agitation. In particular, the Seditious Meetings Act prohibited groups of more than 50 people from assembling to discuss any political subject without prior permission from the sheriff or magistrate.
Since the House of Commons regularly rejected direct challenges to the system of representation by large majorities, supporters of reform had to content themselves with more modest measures. The Whig Lord John Russell brought forward one such measure in 1820, proposing the disfranchisement of the notoriously corrupt borough of Grampound in Cornwall. He suggested that the borough's two seats be transferred to the city of Leeds. Tories in the House of Lords agreed to the disfranchisement of the borough, but refused to accept the precedent of directly transferring its seats to an industrial city. Instead, they modified the proposal so that two further seats were given to Yorkshire, the county in which Leeds is situated. In this form, the bill passed both houses and became law. In 1828, Lord John Russell suggested that Parliament repeat the idea by abolishing the corrupt boroughs of Penryn and East Retford, and by transferring their seats to Manchester and Birmingham. This time, however, the House of Lords rejected his proposals. In 1830, Russell proposed another, similar scheme: the enfranchisement of Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, and the disfranchisement of the next three boroughs found guilty of corruption; again, the proposal was rejected.
In 1829, support for reform came from an unexpected source – a reactionary faction of the Tory Party. The Tory government under Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, responding to the danger of civil strife in largely Roman Catholic Ireland, drew up the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829. This legislation repealed various laws that imposed political disabilities on Roman Catholics, in particular laws that prevented them from becoming members of Parliament. In response, disenchanted ultra-Tories who perceived a danger to the established religion came to favour parliamentary reform, in particular the enfranchisement of Manchester, Leeds, and other heavily Nonconformist cities in northern England.
The death of King George IV on 26 June 1830 dissolved Parliament by law, and a general election was held. Electoral reform, which had been frequently discussed during the preceding parliament, became a major campaign issue. Across the country, several pro-reform "political unions" were formed, made up of both middle and working class individuals. The most influential of these was the Birmingham Political Union, led by Thomas Attwood. These groups confined themselves to lawful means of supporting reform, such as petitioning and public oratory, and achieved a high level of public support.
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey became prime minister in 1830, and his first announcement as prime minister was a pledge to carry out parliamentary reform. On 1 March 1831, Lord John Russell brought forward the Reform Bill in the House of Commons on the government's behalf. The bill disfranchised 60 of the smallest boroughs, and reduced the representation of 47 others. Some seats were completely abolished, while others were redistributed to the London suburbs, to large cities, to the counties, and to Scotland and Ireland. Furthermore, the bill standardised and expanded the borough franchise, increasing the size of the electorate (according to one estimate) by half a million voters.