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Till that time arrives, the representation of Westminster will be upon a level with the rottenest of rotten boroughs.
But if this were not his intention, the method in which he distributed and conducted the elections, being so favorable to liberty, form an inconsistency which is not easily accounted for. He deprived of their right of election all the small boroughs, places the most exposed to influence and corruption.
He eulogized the system of rotten boroughs, since it favored the return to Parliament of young men of great abilities, who without the patronage of nobles would fail in popular elections; and he cited the cases of Pitt, Fox, Burke, Canning, Perceval, and others who represented Appleby, Old Sarum, Wendover, and other places almost without inhabitants. Sir Charles Wetherell, Mr.
Such grants from the king become noticeably frequent in the reign of Richard and are even more so under John. The financial necessities of both kings and their recklessness, at least that of Richard, in the choice of means to raise money, made it easy for the boroughs to purchase the rights or exemptions they desired.
Ponsonby proposed, in the spirit of Flood's plan ten years earlier, to unite to the boroughs four miles square of the adjoining country, thus creating a counterpoise to the territorial aristocracy on the one hand, and the patrons of boroughs on the other; he also proposed to extend the suffrage to every tradesman who had served five years' apprenticeship, and gave each county three instead of two members, leaving intact, of course, the forty-shilling freehold franchise.
In speaking of the manner in which the Parliamentary elections are conducted, an English writer says: "Since 1832, few of those scenes of violence, and even of bloodshed, which formerly distinguished Parliamentary elections in many English boroughs, have been witnessed.
The yells of "Clôture, clôture!" dominated all else, and it was finally voted among frantic disorder, the French and Dutch standing uproarious against eighteen nationalities. For on important points they vote so. And in this there is great cunning, for the organisers hold pocket boroughs among the Swiss, and Bulgarians, and Servians and other European kidlings of the Balkans.
The town authorities of Portsmouth and many other boroughs are about to employ these methods for the prevention of disease among the civil population. This book describes them and tells the story of the fight against a wicked and cruel fanaticism.
"Oh yes I suppose you are too young to remember. He got into Parliament just after he left Oxford. He was put in by an old uncle for a Family Borough Bilton one of those snug little seats, not exactly 'Pocket Boroughs, but very like them, which survived until the Reform Act of 1867." "How long did he sit?" "Only for one Parliament from 1852 to 1857. No one ever knew why he gave up.
This seems, no doubt, to modern eyes a somewhat eccentric and haphazard line of demarkation; but it must be remembered that even until much later days the ten pounds rating principle in boroughs held its own, and was believed to be absolutely essential to the maintenance of an independent and upright body of voters, and to the securing of such a body against the danger of being "swamped," according to the once familiar word, by the votes of the dependent and the corrupt.
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