The English practice of rearranging the constituencies, and apportioning the representatives among them, only at long intervals, of treating a bill for the purpose as an exceptional measure of great political importance, instead of the natural result of each new census, has the advantage of preventing frequent temptations to gerrymander. But, on the other hand, it raises the matter of electoral districts to the height of a constitutional, and almost a revolutionary, question, preceded sometimes by long and serious agitation, and always fought over on party grounds. This is a perpetual difficulty, for the shifting of population, which must always be changing the ratio of representation, will from time to time make a redistribution of seats inevitable. [Sidenote: The Franchise.] The extension of the franchise was long a grave constitutional question also, but it has now been so nearly worked out that it can hardly be regarded in that light in future. Before the Reform Act of 1832 the franchise in the counties depended entirely upon the ownership of land, an old statute of 1429,[202:1] having confined the right of voting to forty-shilling freeholders; that is, to men who owned an estate of inheritance, or at least a life estate, in land of the annual value of forty shillings.[203:1] In the boroughs the franchise was based upon no uniform principle, but varied according to the custom or charter of the borough. Sometimes it depended upon the tenure of land; and, since residence was by no means always necessary, it might happen that the voters did not live in the place, and there were even cases where members were returned to Parliament by boroughs that had no longer a single inhabitant. Sometimes the right belonged to the governing body of the town; sometimes to all the freemen; sometimes to all householders who paid local taxes; and in one place, at least, it extended to all the inhabitants. In these last cases the franchise was actually wider before the Reform Act of 1832 than it was afterward, so that although the act enlarged the electorate very much on the whole, and preserved the rights of all existing voters, it narrowed the franchise seriously for the future in a few places.[203:2] [Sidenote: Reform Act of 1832.] [Sidenote: Counties.]