Democracy; Great Britain -- Politics and government
By the Reform Bill of 1867 all male householders in boroughs were
enfranchised, and all male lodgers who paid L10 a year for unfurnished
rooms. The town workman was enfranchised by this Act as the middle-class
man had been enfranchised by the Act of 1832, and the electorate was
increased from about 100,000 to 2,000,000. An amendment that women should
not be excluded from the franchise was moved by John Stuart Mill, and
defeated. Some redistribution of seats took place under the Act of 1867,
eleven boroughs were disfranchised, thirty-five with less than 10,000
inhabitants were made single-member constituencies, and additional
representation was given to Chelsea, Hackney, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester,
Salford, Glasgow, Birmingham, Dundee, and Merthyr. "Thus was _Household
Suffrage_ brought in in the boroughs, and a great step was made towards
democracy, for it was plain that the middle-class county constituencies
could not last very much longer now that all workmen who happened to live
in boroughs had their votes."[83]
The third Reform Act, giving household suffrage to the country districts,
was passed by Gladstone in 1884, and it was followed by a Redistribution of
Seats Act in 1885. By these two Acts the agricultural labourer was
enfranchised, a service franchise was created for those who were qualified
neither as householders nor lodgers, and the principle of single-member
equal electoral districts--on a basis of 54,000 inhabitants--was adopted.
Only twenty-three boroughs, the City of London and the Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, retained double-member representation. The
membership of the House of Commons was increased from six hundred and
fifty-eight to six hundred and seventy, the present total; and the
franchise remains as it was fixed in 1885--occupation and ownership giving
the right to vote.
From time to time, for more than a hundred years, a plea has been put
forward for universal or adult suffrage for men on the ground of an
abstract right to vote, but it has met with little encouragement.[84] There
is, however, a wide feeling in favour of simplifying the registration laws,
so that a three-months' residence, instead of, as at present, a year's
residence from one July to the next, should be sufficient to qualify for
the franchise. There is also a strong demand for "one man, one vote." At
present, while no elector may give more than one vote in any constituency,
he may, if he has property in various places, give a vote in each of these
districts, and some men thus give as many as a dozen votes at a general
election. This plural voting by property and residential qualifications in
different constituencies is not customary in other constitutional
countries, and a Bill for its abolition passed the House of Commons in
1906, but was rejected by the Lords.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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