his book on the English Constitution, it is evident that he had serious misgivings about the effect of that Act, and one suspects that he looked back to the Palmerstonian period as the golden age of what was, in his opinion, the best of all governments, a safe, sober, cautious middle-class government.

The Reform Act of 1832 had shown the possibility of making changes in an electoral system which was venerable, and was venerated, by reason of its antiquity. It suggested and paved the way for further changes. There was, as has been said above, no finality in its provisions. The forty-shilling free* holder came down from the middle ages. But there was nothing venerable or sacrosanct about the £50 leaseholder or the £10 occupier. If £10, why not some other figure?

Disraeli was the first minister who was ✩ bold enough to propose dispensing with all tests of rental or rating, and to offer the borough franchise to householders as such. The history of the Representation of the People Act, 1867, is well known, and its inner side was revealed many years ago in Lord Malmesbury's indiscreet Memoirs of an ExMinister. The bill of 1867, as introduced, while conferring the household franchise, surrounded it with safeguards. The householder was required to have resided for two years, and to have paid his rates personally. A householder paying twenty shillings in direct taxation was to have a sec

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ond vote, and there were some special franchises as in previous bills. But the government which introduced the bill was in a minority in the house of commons, and all these safeguards disappeared in committee. The period of residence was reduced to one year. The second vote and the fancy franchises disappeared. After a long battle over the compound householder," the man whose rates are paid for him by his landlord, com- ' pounding was abolished, and all householders were to be rated in person. But this was found so inconvenient that, two years later, compounding was restored, and personal payment of rates ceased to be a necessary qualification for being registered as a voter. Lastly, £10 lodgers were admitted to the vote. Thus the measure was completely transformed, and it has been estimated that the number of persons enfranchised was increased from about 100,000 to about two millions. These were the changes made by the Act of 1867 in the borough franchise. Those which it made in the county franchise were less important. It reduced the £10 qualification for copyholders and leaseholders to £5. And it added a £12 rateable occupation franchise which practically took the place of the £50 rental franchise.

The Act of 1867 enfranchised the urban working man as the Act of 1832 had enfranchised the mainly urban middle class. Its effects made themselves apparent, spe

cially in the changed attitude of the legislature towards trade unions, and generally in the great outburst of legislative activity during Gladstone's first ministry, a period as fertile in legislation as the period immediately preceding 1867 had been barren.

Among the Acts passed during that ministry was the Ballot Act, 1872, which introduced into parliamentary elections the system of election by secret ballot. Vote by ballot had been one of the famous "six points of the Charter of 1848, and proposals for establishing it had been annually introduced by private members, but, before the ministry of 1869, had never been supported or proposed by the government. The Act was not passed without a long and hard fight, and then only as an experimental measure, to remain in force for one year only, unless renewed. It has been renewed annually ever since by the Expiring Laws Continuance Act of each year, but curiously enough, though it was passed nearly forty years ago, and though its lapse would throw the whole law of elections into confusion, it has not even yet found its place on the statute book as a permanent measure. It put an end to the venerable ceremonies of election at the old county court-a very different institution from the modern judicial county court-and, incidentally, by altering the form of the writ for elections, removed the distinction between knights, citizens and burgesses, grouping them members."

all as

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The last stage in the history of the reform of parliamentary elections is marked by the Representation of the People Act, 1884, and by the Act for the Redistribution of Seats which followed in 1885. The Act of 1884 is in form clumsy and difficult to understand, but its effect is very simple. It extended to the counties the household and lodger franchise which the Act of 1867 had conferred on the boroughs. It also remodelled the occupation qualification, making the occupation of any land or tenement of a clear yearly value of £10 a qualification both in boroughs and in counties. And it created a new form of franchise, called the service franchise, intended to meet some cases not quite covered by the householder or the lodger vote. The Act increased the electorate by forty per cent, and its most important effect was the enfranchisement of the rural working man. The Act of 1867 had given the vote to the working man in the town. The Act of 1884 gave it to the working man in the country, the agricultural labourer and his like. It was soon afterwards that the famous "three acres and a cow made their appearance on the parliamentary scene.

The house of lords refused to pass the Act of 1884 unless it was accompanied by a measure for the redistribution of seats. The difference between the two houses was ended by a compromise, in pursuance of which, after an adjournment, a bill was brought in which

became law as the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885. The terms of the bill were settled, during the adjournment, by an arrangement between the chiefs of the two parties, and so numerous and conflicting were the interests involved that without some such agreement the bill could not have become law.

The Act of 1885, though to some extent a compromise, was drawn on bolder lines than its predecessors, and was based on the general principle of equal electoral districts each returning a single member. The proportion of one seat for every 54,000 people was roughly taken as the basis of representation. In order to adapt this principle to the then existing system with the least possible change, boroughs with less than 15,000 inhabitants were disfranchised altogether, and became, for electoral purposes, a part of the county in which they were situated. Boroughs with more than 15,000 and less than 50,000 inhabitants were allowed to retain, or if previously unrepresented, were given, one member each: those with more than 50,000 and less than 165,000, two members; those above 165,000, three members, with an additional member for every 50,000 people more. The same general principle was followed in the counties.

The boroughs which had previously elected two members, and retained that number, remained single constituencies for the election