POLITICAL HISTORY 



tion of a town's meeting in Manchester praying for reform had 10,000 

 signatures ; Accrington, Wigan, and Oldham petitioned for election by 

 ballot. These were only a few out of the numbers that were sent to the 

 House of Commons early in the following year."' The distress was universal,"* 

 and all looked to a measure of Parliamentary reform to relieve it. When 

 the House met in 1830, Lord John Russell introduced a Reform Bill and 

 made his famous speech in which he boldly asserted that the House of 

 Commons did not represent the nation. He pointed out that at Liverpool, 

 where there was a large constituency, and where he would be told there was 

 a fine example of a popular election, he would see every voter receiving a 

 number of guineas in his box as the price of his corruption. He further 

 pointed out that such was the unjust state of things that ' a ruined mound ' 

 or ' an uninhabited park,' or ' three niches in a stone wall,' sent representatives 

 to Parliament, whilst opulent towns full of enterprise and industry (such as 

 Manchester, Blackburn, and other places), sent no representatives."" 



Among other speakers for the Bill were Mr. Hunt, the Radical, then 

 member for Preston. For him the measure, though he supported it, did 

 not go far enough. ' All that has been said in this House,' he scornfully 

 remarked, 



had been said twenty years ago by the weavers of Lancashire . . . The suffrage is not 

 widely enough extended if the rabble, as they are called, are not to have votes. Am I to 

 be told that the people who have fought the battle of their country, the lower orders whom 

 I call the useful classes of society, are to be called upon to pay taxes on every article of 

 human subsistence, and afterwards denied the choosing of representatives ? 



As a very moderate but far from enthusiastic reformer Lord Palmerston 

 spoke for the Bill, and Sir Robert Peel against it. He was answered by the 

 Lord Stanley of that day, who, to the honour of the house of Derby, warmly 

 espoused the motion, though subsequently as earl of Derby, he lost his 

 enthusiasm for the cause. Notwithstanding these appeals the motion was 

 lost. Parliament was dissolved, and a second Bill was introduced by the 

 ministry only to be thrown out in the Lords. Earl Grey thereupon very 

 properly refused to accept office again or to introduce the third Bill unless 

 the king would promise to exercise his prerogative of creating new peers if 

 necessary. The king reluctantly promised, but the threat sufficed, and the 

 third Reform Bill of December, 1831, resulted. In March, 1832, it passed 

 the Commons, and was carried in the Lords by a majority of eighty-four. 

 The Bill was at least a step in advance, and a necessary link between the old 

 system and the new. The new boroughs now enfranchised were Manchester, 

 Bolton, Blackburn, Oldham, each returning two members to Parliament, also 

 Ashton-under-Lyne, Bury, Rochdale, Salford, and Warrington, each entitled 

 to return one member. The borough of Newton was disfranchised, and 

 Clitheroe was given one member only. Instead of two knights the county 

 was to return four, two for north, and two for south, Lancashire respectively. 



The working classes of Lancashire, feeling themselves duped by their 

 middle class neighbours, who had used their common agitation merely to 

 enfranchise themselves, threw themselves yet more heartily into the demo- 



"' Molesworth, Hist, of the Reform Bill j^ 1 832, p. 86 ; see also Com. Journ. Ixxxvi, pt. i, p. 3 10, 10 Feb. ; 

 26 Feb. 183 1. 



'" For details of the social and economic distress in Lancashire at this period see below, pp. 309-10. 

 '" Hansard, quoted Molesworth, op. cit. pp. 104-5. 



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