John A. Phillips

The Great Reform Bill of 1832 and the Rise of Partisanship

Few parliamentary measures in modem times generated as much contemporary concern as the Great Reform Bill of 1832, a phenomenon historians have naturally attempted to explain in some detail. Designed primarily to correct perceived abuses and inequities in Englands electoral system, the bill provoked intense debate over the future course reform appeared to chart. Opponents viewed the bills probable impact as an unqualified disaster, while proponents saw it as nothing less than political salvation. After 1832, disagreements over the acts effects were just as vehement and varied, leaving historians the task of separating the rhetoric from the reality of English politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Two of the most pressing questions in recent years have been how reform politicized the electorate and how it affected behavior at the polls. The interpretation that currently dominates minimizes the impact of reform. An analysis of Shrewsbury politics between 1819 and 1841, however, indicates that reform redefined both political discourse and political behavior. Agitation for reform blended local and national political concerns; the electorate responded by closing partisan ranks. Once behind party banners, Shrewsburys voters rarely defected. Shrewsburys experience further suggests that even in Englands broadly participatory unreformed political system, one already familiar with parties and issues, the Great Reform Bill of 1832 transformed the rhetoric and reality of political life.

The Structure of Electoral Politics in Unreformed England

Discussions of the unreformed English electoral system usually revolve around its three major flaws: the control of borough seats in the Commons by individual patrons, the general lack of opportunities for popular participation, and electoral corruption. The standard examples of Old Sarum (for patronage), the election of 1761 (for the lack of participation), and the Oxfordshire election of 1754 (for corruption) have been cited so often that certain bits of disparaging information, such as the 20,000-pound Tory expenditure in Oxfordshire in 1754, are permanently imbedded in the secondary literature and have resulted in dismissals of eighteenth-century popular politics as unworthy of serious consideration. Instead of using such extreme examples to illustrate the depths to which electoral politics could sink, this more systematic inquiry into the nature of electoral politics enumerates both electoral patronage and electoral participation over the entire eighteenth century, and considers electoral corruption in a necessarily more speculative fashion. From this broader perspective, it is clear that the dismissals of popular politics in England before the Reform Act are unwarranted. Electoral politics played an increasingly important role in the political system during the reign of George III, and to neglect its importance is to misinterpret the political environment of unreformed England.

From Municipal Matters to Parliamentary Principles: Eighteenth-Century Borough Politics in Maidstone

The deaths of three Maidstone Common Councilmen in 1787 and 1788 threatened the unthinkable-the destruction of the Corporation partys long local political hegemony. Although the Corporation party still controlled a solid majority of the twelve aldermen, the antiCorporationists had won eight of nine seats at the Common Council election two years earlier, giving the ruling group their first genuine political fright in more than twenty years. The further weakening of the partys control over the Common Council as a result of the deaths of Thomas Stevenson, Henry Pocock, and Henry Cutbush, all longstanding Corporation supporters, forced the council to hold an election to fill these three seats. After scheduling an election for August 29, 1788, the Corporation party leaders spared no pains in trying to achieve their goal of replacing their deceased supporters with the similarly disposed William Wimble, William Town, and George May. The antiCorporation party also worked diligently for its candidates, and together the two parties recruited almost 200 nonresident freemen to vote. Dozens of freemen were brought in from London and its environs, substantial contingents arrived from Chatham and Rochester, and even more came from Aylesbury and other parts of Kent.