The Long Eighteenth Century by Frank O’Gorman

Author:Frank O’Gorman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury

REFORM POLITICS, 1763–1789

The reform movements of this period have customarily been seen as the ancestor and origin of the reform movements of the early nineteenth century and thus of the Reform Act of 1832. Its critical place in the emergence of a modern, reformed and more democratic political system gives it particular significance. So compelling has it seemed that many historians have actually adopted the perspectives of the reformers themselves and claimed that Hanoverian politics were corrupt, its electoral system ludicrously unrepresentative and its management autocratic and intimidating. On this reading, Britain badly needed a new electoral system to keep abreast of the remarkable changes in population, in society and in the economy.

In the face of such an emotive, thematic interpretation, a few warnings need to be issued. Most contemporaries were in fact content with their parliamentary system and the electoral structure which underpinned it. To the modern mind the distribution of seats, the varied nature of the franchise and the rumbustious method of electoral campaigning seem anomalous and unfamiliar. The old electoral system, however, lasted as long as it did because it worked in a rough and ready fashion to meet contemporary requirements. The output of private bill legislation demonstrated Parliament’s readiness to provide for local needs. Moreover, the fact that the electoral system may not have been representative did not unduly trouble contemporaries. It was not intended to reflect population. It is true that new towns sprang up and old ones increased in size, but it is important to recognize that some of their residents could vote in county elections even if the town lacked separate representation. At the same time, we should not be too ready to assume that the eighteenth-century reform movement was simply a by-product of social and economic changes. Radical reform was not simply a response to the increase in population: reform opinion was to be found in some areas of the country least affected by it. The demand for reform was not merely a consequence of rapid industrialization: in the 1760s industrialization had hardly begun. Similarly, the demand for reform cannot be linked exclusively to urbanization because reform activity, especially in 1779–85, was to be found in many rural areas. Least of all, was it a reflection of the rise of the middle class: many sections of the middling orders were notably unsympathetic to reform. In any case, the key reform demand was less for the enlargement of borough electorates than for their transference to county constituencies.

More plausible is the view that the origins of many aspects of the radical reform movement of the later eighteenth century had to some extent been anticipated by the Tory Party, and, to a more limited extent, by the opposition Whigs, of the first half of the century. There is some similarity, for example, between the open boroughs in which the Tories enjoyed strong popular support (Bristol, Coventry, London, Newcastle, Norwich, Westminster), those unrepresented towns which might in the middle of the eighteenth century more realistically be

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