i6 
Land & Water 
February 21, 19 18 
specially dangerous for a party that had to face John Bnght 
Who. unlike Cobbett, in many respects had his i^wer for 
chastising insolence. Thcv drew a sharp and hnal line 
between class and class. The f"»«^ving famous outburst by 
Robert Lowe, who shared with Lord Robert Cecil (the late 
Lord Salisbury) the leadership of the resisting forces, did 
service in every pamphlet, in every speech in which the 
Refpnners presented their demands: 
•• Let anv gentleman consider the constituencies he has had the 
honour to be concerned with. If vou want venality, if you 
want ignorance, if you want drunkenness, and the facility to 
be intimidated, or if. on the other hand, you want impulsive, 
unreflecting, and violent people, where do you look for them 
in constituencies ? Do you go to the top or to the bottom i 
This p.assagc recalling Pitt's outburst about the idle and 
profligate population of the northern towns was received with 
frantic applause in the House of Commons, which forgot 
that it was not exactly prudent to provoke too far a population 
that had long been conscious of its grievances and was 
becoming steadily more conscious of its strength. John Bright 
described these opponents very happily when he said that they 
took " a Botany Bay view of the great bulk of their country- 
men," and Gladstone reminded the House of Commons that 
the men at the bottom were "our own flesh and blood." 
In 1884 Mr. Gladstone, when defending his Bill for en- 
franchising the agricultural labourer, gave an estimate of 
the numbers of people enfranchised at different times : 
"In 1832 there was passed what was considered a Magna 
Charta of British liberties ; but that Magna Charta of British 
hberties added, according to the previous estimate of Lord 
John Russell, 500,000, while according to the results con- 
siderably less than 500,000 were added to the entire con- 
stituency of the three countries. After 1832 we come to 1866. 
At that' time the total constituency of the United Kingdom 
reached 1,364,000. By the Bills which were passed in 1867 
and 1869 that number was raised to 2,448,000. Under the 
action of the present law the constituency has reached in 
round numbers what I would call 3,000,000. This Bill, if 
it passes as presented, will add to the English constituency 
over 1 ,300,000 persons. It will add to the Scotch constituency, 
Scotland being at present rather better provided in this 
respect than either of the other countries, over 200,000, and 
to the Irish constituency over 400,000 ; or in the main to the 
present aggregate constituency of the United Kingdom, taken 
at 3,000,000, it will add 2,000,000 more, nearly twice as much 
as was added since 1867 and more than four times as much 
as was added in 1832." 
The interval between the first and second Reform Bills 
was 35 years, between the second and third 17 years, and 
now the fourth Bill has come just 33 years after the third. 
The new Bill, according to. an estimate given by Mr. Arthur 
Henderson, will increase the electorate from 8,000,000 to 
16,300,000. The Bill, though it more than doubles the elec- 
torate and destroys for the first time the disqualification of 
sex, has passed with infinitely less excitement and friction 
than an}' of its predecessors. The reason, of course, is to be 
found in the war. It was obvious to anyone who was in the 
least degree sensitive about national .consistency that we 
could not proclaim to the world that we were fighting for the 
cause of democracy while refusing to acknowledge that cause 
in our own system of representation. There are a few people 
left who think that men can legislate for women just as Pitt 
and Castlereagh thought that the rich could legislate for the 
poor, and as Macaulay thought the middle classes could 
legislate for the workman. But nine people out of ten have 
been convinced of the necessity and the justice of enfranchising 
women by the devoted and heroic service that women have 
rendered during the war. It was difficult in a world which 
knew something of the facts described in the Reports of the 
Work of the Munition Factories for anyone to speak with 
scorn of the claims of the war worker to the rights of a citizen. 
Thus the atmosphere of the war has given soberness and 
dignity to the final chapter of a discussion which has had many 
fierce and undignified pages in its past. 
We have seen that the Bill of 1832 was followed by legisla- 
tion, which took account and gave expression to the wishes 
and the interests of the new electorate. We see the same 
tendencies in the legislation that followed the other Reform 
Bills. It Is no accident that the enfranchisement of the 
workman was followed by the Acts that gave Trade Unions 
their power, as well as by the granting of the ballot and 
Forster's Education Act. It was not until the agricultural 
labourer had been enfranchised in 1884 that Bills were adopted 
by Governments recognising — however imperfectly — the need 
for rural refonn. We may take it therefore that the addition 
of 6,000,000 of women to the electorate and the increase of 
the voting power of the working classes which will follow from 
this Bill will give a special character to legislation. 
If the argument that has been developed here is 
correct the new electorate will demand, above all things, a 
more civilised life for the ordinary man and woman. This 
demand is the chief inspiration of the war. In all times of 
agitation and revolution men and women come to measure 
their institutions by a new standard, to apply to their society 
a new test. The customs and traditions of men and of classes 
are a kind of screen between their minds and the more brutal 
realities. In a great disturbance like the war those customs 
and traditions lose their power, and men and women look 
around them with a new curiosity and a new independence. 
That is happening all over Europe. . The more Europe has 
had to suffer the more passionately have men and women 
come to question their accepted beliefs. 
The degree of violence with which men shake themselves free 
from the restraintsof old habits and the patience and tolerance 
of the settled life of a society depend on conditions of race, 
time and politics. If men cannot get from their society, as it 
is constituted, conditions that seem indispensable to their 
happiness and freedom, that passion takes the form of revo- 
lutionary violence. A perfectly detached and impartial 
survey of the statex>f mind of the workpeople in each European 
country at this moment would be a document of overpowering 
interest. At present we have not the material for passing 
judgment on the state of mind of the workpeople of any 
country ; wliether Bolsheviks, German strikers, bread rioters 
in Austria or Italy, or even the workmen of our own country. 
But in considering of any one case whether or not discontent 
will take the form of actual revolution, we may certainly 
attach some weight to the capacity of existing institutions to 
satisfy these new demands. The Soviets have been defended 
as a means of collecting and expressing the will of the work- 
people in a more effective form than any provided for the 
Russian workman in the new representative institution of his 
country. Critics of the Parliamentary system will watch, 
presumably with interest, the actual working of this method, 
if it survives. In our own case the passing of the Reform 
Bill provides at a most critical moment in our domestic history 
an opportunity for adapting our Parliamentary institutioi.s 
to the needs of the time ; for strengthening the arguments 
of those who think that the men and women who are anxious 
for a new life should use rather than break the machinery of 
Parliament . 
Likely Reforms 
If, then, the workpeople use their power to get from Parlia 
ment what they want we may hope to see a new spirit inspinng 
all our public policy. The Bradford City Council is considering 
a scheme for building ten model suburbs on its crest of hills. 
We may expect to see a great impetus given to a generous and 
constructive policy of housing and town building. The wildest 
ambitions of the days before the war will seem to be paltry 
in this new atmosphere. One reform that is certain is the 
shortening- of the factory day, and other reforms will follow 
from that change. The industrial tovm is the home or the 
lodging of a race that spends its daylight in the mill. If 
you rescue some of the daylight for a man's life, you will 
have to change the town, for then it will be not merely the 
place where he sleeps and eats, but the place where he spends 
his leisure. A Parliament representing the new electorate will 
have to satisfy this new craving for a humane and more 
various life. 
The special influence of women will be seen in a new sense 
of responsibility for children and in a new interest in those 
aspects of life in which women are specially concerned. But 
jt will have one more general effect on policy. Women are 
the housekeepers of the nation. They understand the painful 
science of saving and the skilled "art of spending. For the 
housekeeper the war has been a stern school. Women who 
have spent hours in the queues have learnt as much in one 
way as men who have spent hours in the trenches have learht 
in another. Now it is obvious that social developments are 
tending more and more to encourage the organisation of the 
producers. This movement is prompted partly by the 
business instincts of the modern industrial world, partly by 
its social and its spiritual discontents. The cartel is the 
symbol of the one ; syndicalism and the doctrines of the 
Guild Socialists are the symbols of the other.. The organisation 
of the producer is in itself a welcome development. It repre- 
sents the triumph of larger views. The Industrial Councils, 
the concrete form in which the best practicable interpretation 
of this spirit is taking forni, will, if they are wisely directed, 
improve the whole tone and quality of industrial life. But 
there is an obvious danger, the danger that these Councils 
will give too much power to the producer, and sorrie critics 
have attacked the constitution of the Potteries Council on 
this ground, for in the statement of objects there is included 
a clause about maintaining selling prices. At such a moment, 
then, it is specially significant that 6,000,000 women should be 
added to the electorate, for their enfranchisement means a 
striking increase in the political power of the consumers. 
