Developing the reform bill’s boundary clauses

The first reform bill for England and Wales was introduced to the Commons on 1 March 1831. It stipulated that a privy council committee would clarify and update the parliamentary boundaries of every English and Welsh borough and extend the boundaries of every borough that contained fewer than 300 £10 householders. A second committee was to divide most double-member English counties, and the four-member county of Yorkshire was to be divided into its three ridings. Both committees were to have the power to summon witnesses, under oath, and were to complete their work within three months of the passage of the reform bill. Following this, England and Wales’s new parliamentary boundaries were to be issued via royal proclamation.³ The clauses containing these stipulations developed in a piecemeal manner between December 1830 and March 1831. They were initially the product of the committee of four, to whom Grey had delegated responsibility for drafting the reform bill. The committee met in December 1830 and submitted their proposals on 14 January 1831. These were developed further in cabinet before the parliamentary announcement of the bill in March 1831.

The division of counties was one of the few consistent features of the Grey ministry’s reform scheme between December 1830 and the Reform Act’s passage in June 1832. After some debate on the population threshold, the committee of four proposed to provide two additional seats to twenty-seven counties containing a population of over 150,000 and to divide these counties into two double-member electoral districts (except the four-member seat of Yorkshire, that would be divided into three double-member districts).⁴ The creation of fifty-five extra county seats had served an important function in the committee’s reformed electoral map. As discussed in Chapter 1, if the commercial interests of unrepresented towns were to gain forty additional Commons seats via new boroughs, the moderate Whig case for reform had established that the landed and agricultural interests were to be provided with sixty county seats. This was intended to balance the representation of interests in the electoral system, ensure the future stability of the constitution and conciliate sceptical county members over the bill. As well as assigning two additional seats to twenty-seven counties, the committee of four felt it necessary to divide these counties into double-member constituencies. This avoided the creation of four-member counties, which it was feared would force candidates to appeal to the popular, democratic vote.⁵

The committee’s fears over four-member counties were based on recent experiences in Yorkshire, which had become a four-member county following the disfranchisement of Grampound in 1821. The uncontested 1826 Yorkshire election was reported to have cost upwards of £100,000. And in 1830, the populist Whig, Henry Brougham, who had no personal ties to the area, was elected following a campaign underpinned by the burgeoning liberal press that focused on winning votes in the county’s unenfranchised towns through electioneering on predominantly national issues.⁶ Such contests were expensive even for the largest landholders, and fears that national issues promoted by an uncontrollable press might replace the more traditional means of securing county votes suggested that the cost and size of elections had to be reduced.⁷ The committee wanted men with property and historic associations with their locality to be returned for the counties, not populists like Brougham. The division of counties promised to reduce travelling, canvassing and polling costs, as well as focus electioneering on local issues. It was intended to ensure that ‘men of great respectability, [and] of good family’ would find it easier to stand as county candidates and represent their specific interests in the Commons.⁸ The committee of four proposed that the division of counties should be decided by a privy council committee consisting of two paid secretaries, the lord chancellor (Lord Brougham), the lord president (the third marquess of Lansdowne), the lord privy seal (first earl of Durham), the speaker of the Commons (Charles Manners-Sutton) and a secretary of state, and announced via royal proclamation within six months of the reform bill’s passage.⁹ These plans suggest that it was hoped that a sitting committee at Westminster, rather than travelling commissioners, would be able to settle the division of counties.

The committee of four’s proposals for the reform of borough boundaries underwent a series of more fundamental changes between December 1830 and March 1831. On 14 December 1830, the committee initially proposed that a royal commission of inquiry (sending travelling commissioners to collect information from the localities) should fix the boundaries of newly enfranchised boroughs.¹⁰ This had been part of Lord John Russell’s pre-committee reform proposal and suggested that the committee was aware that newly enfranchised boroughs required on-the-spot investigation. By 14 January 1831 the committee had decided that the commissioners would be unpaid and supported by one paid secretary.

Due to the receipt of parliamentary returns from individual boroughs during January 1831, the committee also proposed that the commission should clarify the boundaries of existing boroughs.¹¹ These returns had been requested after cabinet members raised concerns over the committee’s intention to base their redistribution schedules on the 1821 census, which recorded population by parish and township, not by parliamentary borough. The returns revealed that the parliamentary limits of 101 of the 202 pre-reform English parliamentary boroughs differed from the geographical areas of the same name as defined in the 1821 census.¹² More alarmingly, five replies provided no information regarding parliamentary boundaries, and sixty-six returning officers only provided approximate information pertaining to their borough’s limits.¹³ This return, as well as Russell, Durham and Brougham’s unsuccessful attempts at obtaining borough charters from municipal corporations during the previous decade, was also the likely cause for the clause in the first reform bill that allowed documents to be demanded from officials under oath.¹⁴

In February 1831, the committee’s plans for a royal commission underwent further change. This followed the receipt of a second parliamentary return relating to the amount of £10, £20 and £40 householders in each existing borough, which had been provided to the cabinet by 12 February.¹⁵ The return revealed that, of the 140 English boroughs due to retain the franchise, 87 contained fewer than 300 £10 householders.¹⁶ As Brock has stated, the return forced the ministry’s hand in terms of accepting the £10 franchise. However, even after the £10 franchise had been agreed there remained concern.¹⁷ As the first reform bill intended to abolish many ancient borough franchise rights, the new data suggested that a £10 franchise based on existing parliamentary limits would have left 62 per cent of reformed English boroughs with fewer than 300 voters. Russell initially proposed an elaborate scheme for topping up the electorate of these boroughs, by enfranchising the wealthiest residents from the surrounding hundred until the requisite number of voters was achieved. The cabinet rejected this proposal in favour of the attorney general, Thomas Denman’s suggestion that these boroughs might be thrown into their surrounding hundred, as had been done with several corrupt boroughs prior to 1830.¹⁸ Denman’s suggestion was tapered slightly in order that the boundaries of these boroughs were only proposed to be extended into their surrounding parishes until they contained 300 £10 householders. In many cases extending a borough into its surrounding hundred would have led to overlaps with other borough boundaries or created excessively large boroughs.¹⁹

The final alteration to the government’s boundary reform proposals prior to 1 March was that a privy council committee, rather than a royal commission of inquiry, was to settle borough boundaries. It appears this change took place following the addition of the politically contentious 300 £10 householder clause, as well as the cabinet’s realisation that boundary changes needed to be enacted speedily prior to reformed parliamentary elections. As constitutional precedent since the 1707 Act of Union required a separate parliamentary Act to implement the recommendations of any royal commission concerning constitutional matters, pursuing the committee of four’s initial plans for a royal commission would have required that each borough boundary was subjected to the full scrutiny of a parliamentary bill.²⁰ If a royal commission, as planned, took six months to complete its proposals, and both houses of parliament took three months to approve these proposals, elections might not take place for a year following the passage of reform. More alarmingly, if parliament rejected a contentious boundary bill, it might invalidate a reform bill that had received royal assent. In order to avoid prolonged debate on each boundary change, the government opted to use the privy council’s powers to enact laws via royal proclamation, which the committee of four had already proposed for the division of counties. This was highly unconventional in terms of domestic legislation, as by the early nineteenth century these powers were only used to issue orders in council when managing colonial affairs or deal with emergency domestic situations – as would be the case later in 1831, when a Board of Health was established to deal with a cholera outbreak.²¹ Implementing both borough and county boundary reform through a privy council committee, then, provided a means of speeding up the reform process by avoiding parliamentary scrutiny. That the cabinet sought a speedy boundary settlement was re-affirmed by a reduction in the time allowed for both committees – from six months in the committee of four’s original bill, to three months in the reform bill of 1 March.²²

In contrast to the committee of four’s proposals for the division of counties, boundary reform in the boroughs proved more complex. An exchange of information between the localities and Westminster, via parliamentary returns, was fundamental in shaping some of the basic principles of the Grey ministry’s proposals. Furthermore, the receipt of data, by early February 1831, relating to the number of £10 householders contained in existing boroughs was highly fortuitous for the government. If the data had been received a week later, it is unlikely the proposal to extend boroughs until they contained 300 £10 householders would have been included in their first reform bill. If this had been the case, critics as well as supporters of the government would have quickly discovered that a bill, whose chief professed principle was to abolish nomination, was going to introduce a new, more numerous set of rotten boroughs into England’s electoral landscape.²³ Whereas there was a clear ideological and electoral motivation behind the Grey ministry’s proposals for the division of counties, their decision to propose an extensive modification to borough boundaries was taken to avoid political embarrassment. Furthermore, their subsequent decision to implement all boundary changes through the unconventional means of privy council committees indicates that a number of Whigs in the cabinet were willing to sacrifice their constitutionalist principles, and resort to the royal prerogative, to ensure reform became a reality. Such political expediency did not escape the bill’s parliamentary opponents.

Anti-reform opposition to boundary reform

The good fortune experienced by the cabinet in discovering that their proposals for reform would require extensive boundary change in the boroughs did not continue. Their plans for privy council committees provided parliamentary critics with grounds for genuine constitutional concern – concerns that the government eventually conceded. Following the Commons’ rejection of the reform bill in April 1831 and during the ensuing general election, criticism of the government’s boundary proposals developed further in the Tory press. Alongside initial constitutional grievances, it was argued that the government’s plans to expand the boundaries of some boroughs with fewer than 300 £10 householders, but disfranchise others, revealed a flagrant party motivation behind the reform bill.

During March and April 1831, parliamentary opponents of the reform bill attacked boundary reform on the grounds of constitutionality. Their main contention was that if the bill passed into law, boundary reform would escape due parliamentary process. The first reform bill provided the government with sole authority over the staffing of both privy council committees and did not allow for any parliamentary scrutiny of boundary proposals. Here, critics argued, was a blatant example of the reform bill providing the government and the crown with an unprecedented level of executive authority to effect fundamental changes to the electoral system and the power of the legislature. These fears were compounded when critics realised the borough committee would be required to alter the structure of eighty boroughs beyond recognition in order to ensure they contained 300 £10 householders. Opponents also supposed that a county committee, staffed by Whigs, would divide counties in a manner favourable to Whig landowners. With no recourse for parliament to scrutinise boundary proposals, it was argued that the Whigs would redraw the electoral map to suit their own needs. Peel, leader of the Tory opposition in the Commons, declared the government’s boundary proposals unlawful, the Quarterly Review labelled the committees a ‘most novel and unconstitutional project’, and critics of the bill deployed the arguments detailed above with regularity in both houses of parliament throughout the debates on the first reform bill.²⁴

During these debates, the government maintained its initial justification for their boundary reform proposals. They insisted that borough limits had to be altered in order to ensure that every reformed constituency contained a ‘numerous and independent’ electorate, and that the division of counties was required to increase the efficiency of county elections.²⁵ By contrast, the government had always accepted that their proposals to effect these changes via privy council committees were contentious. When Russell introduced the reform bill on 1 March 1831 he stated that if the opposition could suggest a more constitutional method, the government would ‘have no difficulty in adopting that mode and waiving their own’. By 24 March, he was actively seeking assistance from the bill’s opponents to make the committees more constitutionally agreeable.²⁶ The success of Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment on 19 April, during the Commons committee stage of the first bill, prevented the announcement of any intended government, or opposition, amendments to the privy council committee proposals. This meant that they still formed an integral feature of the reform bill following the dissolution of parliament and during the ensuing general election. As the pro-reform press and candidates, wittingly or not, became synonymous with the electioneering slogan ‘the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill’, their opponents focused increasingly on the issue of boundary reform.

The Tory Morning Post was the chief antagonist, accusing the government of attempting to nullify aristocratic and Tory power through a combination of boundary changes, borough disfranchisement and franchise alterations.²⁷ On 19 April, ‘Zeta’ argued that the boundary and disfranchisement clauses of the reform bill demonstrated how the Grey ministry had ‘prostitute[d] their influence to the vile purposes of factious intrigue’. Zeta observed that through boundary changes, a number of small Whig boroughs with fewer than 300 £10 householders were to be allowed to ‘make up their deficiency by a coalition with adjoining parishes’. This was in contrast to the forty Tory boroughs in schedule A that stood to be completely disfranchised. The Morning Post ran six editorials over the following six weeks that built on these complaints.²⁸ The paper’s analysis of the disfranchisement and boundary clauses suggested that the reform bill was likely to lead to a ‘permanent increase of [Commons] votes to the Whigs, relatively to the Tories, of about 127’.²⁹ The boundary clauses were proportionately more important than disfranchisement in this respect, as the paper had calculated that the Whigs would gain an advantage of fifty-one seats through disfranchisement, twenty-six through the division of counties, and fifty through the extension of borough boundaries. Subsequent editorials re-affirmed this warning, citing the inconsistencies in the 300 £10 householder boundary clause and the fact that prominent Whigs would ‘whisper into the ears’ of the privy council committees.³⁰ The Morning Post was not alone in its anti-boundary reform stance. The ultra-Tory John Bull, which supported the Morning Post’s sentiments, offered a further, more populist, argument against the government’s plans. It warned county freeholders (who according to the first bill were to lose their county franchise if they lived within a borough, and did not qualify to vote as a £10 householder), of the potential consequences of an unconstitutional privy council committee being provided with the power to extend borough boundaries into the counties. By exercising this power, the privy council committee, John Bull observed, would have the power to ‘deprive every freeholder they choose, of his LEGITIMATE, ENGLISH RIGHT [to vote]!’³¹

Nevertheless, efforts to rally opposition to the reform bill’s boundary clauses seem to have been ineffective during the 1831 election. Colonel Jolliffe’s attempts to decry the unconstitutional nature of the privy council committees were met with hissing at Petersfield.³² Silence, rather than cheers, greeted James Freshfield’s attempts to warn the electors of Penryn (which according to the first reform bill was to lose one seat and be grouped with nearby Falmouth) that the precedent set by the unconstitutional privy council committees meant that some future committee would be well within its rights to disfranchise Penryn altogether.³³ Discussion of the constitutional particulars of the reform bill was simply no match for the rallying call of ‘the bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill’. So much so that the Morning Post conceded that even when candidates had expressed support for moderate reform, they had been unable to distinguish their constructive criticism of the bill’s boundary clauses from a perception that they were employing anti-reform sentiment. The paper lamented: ‘must a man forfeit all pretensions to the name of a genuine reformer the moment he revolts at the spectacle of [the] unjust partiality presented by the ministerial measure?’³⁴

The newly formed Grey government was more disposed to listen to anti-reform argument when its second reform bill was announced on 25 June 1831. This bill stipulated that two parliamentary committees would be responsible for implementing borough and county boundary changes. In so doing, the cabinet immediately signalled that its members were eager to disassociate themselves from any electioneering pledges that may have been made for ‘the whole bill’ ahead of a new round of parliamentary negotiations. In practical terms, these changes appeared to have altered little, as the parliamentary committees were still required to fulfil the same role as the privy council committees. Furthermore, it was still intended that England’s reformed boundaries would be issued by royal proclamation, three months after the passage of the bill. In constitutional terms, however, the amendment signalled an acceptance of parliament’s right to check executive power. By allowing non-privy council committee members to sit on the committee, the crown and the government were no longer afforded complete control over setting parliamentary boundaries – a process that it was now acknowledged had the power to substantially redefine the structure of the Commons and undermine its ability to check crown and government authority.

The amendments received a cautious welcome from moderate reformers but did little to placate some anti-reformers. Edward Sugden, MP for St. Mawes, was one of the bill’s most zealous detractors. He felt the changes were an empty gesture and remained unconstitutional. Over the space of two days during July 1831 he complained that three months was not long enough to redefine electoral boundaries. He feared that the government would fill the committee with its friends and complained that it had neither offered any indication of the criteria for redefining boundaries nor provided any opportunity for parliament to scrutinise boundary proposals.³⁵ In reply to Sugden, Edward Stanley (who had offered his support for moderate reform during the recent election) welcomed the government’s changes and stated that he was ‘content to let the matter rest until the names of the … commissioners were laid before the house’. He lambasted Sugden’s obstinacy and welcomed the government’s concessions as a sign that they had realised the futility of pushing for ‘the whole bill’.³⁶

The changes were also appreciated by government supporters, who, freed from the fear of being labelled an anti-reformer (or perhaps just desirous of toeing the ministerial line), were now able to express that they had found plans for a privy council committee unconstitutional all along. John Campbell, who during the 1831 election had called the reform bill ‘a great measure’, expressed his support for the amendment, confessing that he had always thought the proposed privy council committees were ‘highly unconstitutional’.³⁷ As well as remedying a widely accepted constitutional defect in their first bill, the government’s amendments served to increase the chances of the bill’s success by appeasing moderates and marginalising die-hard anti-reformers. This encouraged cross-party co-operation over the issue of boundary committees during July, following which the government also agreed to set limits on the extent to which borough boundaries could be extended, and granted parliament the right to vote on boundary proposals prior to their issue via royal proclamation.³⁸ What the government did not foresee was that sustained criticism from the pro-reform public would soon develop in response to the division of counties.

The Times and the ‘county-mongering clause’

Aside from an editorial campaign during March in the Norwich Mercury, and some localised discontent in Wiltshire and Leicestershire during May, there had been little pro-reform opposition to the government’s proposals for the division of counties prior to July 1831.³⁹ The government’s modifications to their plans for privy council committees in their second reform bill, however, inadvertently drew attention to the boundary clauses of their bill. By August the majority of the pro-reform press, most notably The Times, was engaged in a bitter campaign on the issue. The Times, under the editorial supervision of Thomas Barnes, had by 1831 become Britain’s largest circulating newspaper, shifting 14,000 copies a day – almost double that of its nearest competitors.⁴⁰ Since November 1830, Barnes’s editorials had called for a respectable measure of reform, warning consistently against radical clamour for the ballot and universal suffrage. The reform crisis had provided Westminster with a stark reminder of his power. In December 1830 The Times called for mass petitioning and meetings in favour of reform. By March 1831, over 600 petitions supporting reform had been sent to Westminster, and the number of English political unions had increased from 13 to 29.⁴¹ Barnes was well on his way to earning Wellington’s later recognition as ‘the most powerful man in the country’.⁴²

The first major pro-reform expression of discontent with the division of counties came on 28 June, when the Birmingham Political Union (BPU) declared its opposition to the government’s proposals. Curiously, this opposition, and the subsequent outcry, developed from a misreading of the bill, which had supposed that the government intended to divide counties into four single-member districts. Based on this misinterpretation, the BPU publicly accused the government of attempting to create closed county constituencies, ‘each under the patronage of some wealthy and influential peer or commoner’. Grey replied immediately, informing Thomas Attwood, the BPU’s chairman, that he had been mistaken and that no alteration had been made to this aspect of the bill.⁴³ Grey’s reply had been published in the press by 2 July, but did little to prevent an increasing perception among reformers that the division of counties had been intended as a means of creating closed county districts.⁴⁴ On 6 July, the newly elected pro-reform MP for Yorkshire, George Strickland, informed the Commons that the division of counties would allow for ‘noblemen and men of property’ to drive up ‘herds of tenants to [county] hustings’ and that the country ‘would soon hear as much of nomination counties, as they now heard of nomination boroughs’.⁴⁵ Significantly, on 9 July, The Times took up the cause, following the publication of a letter from an anonymous Worcestershire resident, which re-affirmed the BPU’s original complaint. Barnes announced in the same edition that he shared these concerns and congratulated Strickland for raising the issue in the Commons.⁴⁶

Barnes, who it seems had not read Grey’s rebuke to Attwood, warned his massive readership that some counties ‘might really be cut into three close boroughs, in each of which a great family might return its own man’.⁴⁷ A letter published in The Times two days later corrected Barnes, informing him that the second reform bill did not intend to divide counties into single-member electoral districts. Barnes, however, re-iterated his opposition to the proposals knowing that a meeting of 200 pro-reform MPs was scheduled for the same day.⁴⁸ Two further letters were published in The Times during July, but in order to not distract public attention from debate over the reform bill’s disfranchisement schedules, Barnes refrained from any further editorials until the issue was discussed in parliament.⁴⁹ Parliamentary criticism continued to mount, however, and on 24 July the Whig MP for Staffordshire, Edward Littleton, informed the cabinet that it might be defeated on the matter.⁵⁰ The next day, the eccentric country reformer, William Hughes Hughes, announced his intention to move in committee to erase the division of counties.⁵¹ On 11 August, when Hughes Hughes’s motion was scheduled for discussion, The Times implored MPs to reject the clause. In addition, the Birmingham-based radical, Joseph Parkes, published an editorial in the pro-reform Morning Chronicle, announcing the paper’s opposition to the issue.⁵²

Barnes and Parkes’s opposition rested on the notion that the geographic extent of undivided counties acted as a legitimate curb on aristocratic influence in the unreformed electoral system. Although large landowners were able to influence voters in one part of a county, they contended, a candidate’s need to appeal to public opinion across a whole county diminished their electoral power. As one correspondent to The Times had put it, ‘distant voters form a check to the overpowering weight of local influence’.⁵³ Barnes and Parkes feared that dividing counties into smaller districts would nullify the power of public opinion to rein in aristocratic influence, turning counties into nomination counties. Their solution was that counties should return four members but remain undivided. This had been the intended outcome of Hughes Hughes’s proposed amendment on 11 August, and during the debate on his motion, the MP accepted Barnes’s theory that division would lead to nomination. Unlike Barnes, however, Hughes Hughes did not see nomination, in its own right, as a negative. Instead, his main contention was that nomination counties would legitimise radical demands for the ballot. After terming the division of counties ‘the most unpopular part of the bill throughout the country’ he also warned that division would diminish the status of county MPs, that it required a still unconstitutional boundary committee and was unlikely to necessitate cheaper elections. This could be avoided, he argued, if undivided counties returned four MPs – a system that had proved practicable in the four-member constituencies of Yorkshire, the City of London and Weymouth, and had been partially sanctioned by the government following their separate plans in the second reform bill for seven, three-member counties, without division.⁵⁴

The ministerial response was provided by the chancellor of the exchequer and the leader of the Commons, Viscount Althorp. He argued that the fears of both Hughes Hughes and The Times were unfounded due to a flaw in their theory that the division of counties would create electoral districts under the control of large landowners. Property, he argued, would always influence the nomination of county candidates, this ‘was neither to be wondered at, nor objected to’. He also accepted that in some counties, division might make it easier for large landowners to influence nomination. However, in contrast with nomination boroughs, where a proprietor was able to apply pressure to a small group of voters, a nominated candidate in a divided county would still have to rely on popular election by a large electorate. Even following division county electorates would be too large to allow landowners to influence voter choice.⁵⁵

Althorp might have rested his argument there. However, his subsequent remarks provoked a massive rift between the government, Barnes and the pro-reform press over the following weeks. He went on to explain that in the unlikely event of the nomination county theory being correct, the ‘framers of the bill’ would not have objected to it. It had always been their intention to preserve aristocratic and landed influence by providing extra county seats as compensation for an increase in the democratic share of the representation provided by the enfranchisement of large towns. In contrast with Barnes, who felt that large electorates and popular elections were the greatest asset of the county system, Althorp stated that an ‘evil of the present system’ was ‘that mere popularity could return a county member’. Division, he revealed, had been intended all along as a means of redressing the power balance between democracy and aristocracy in the counties. If plans for division inadvertently tipped the balance of interests in the counties even further towards the aristocracy, so be it, appeared to be Althorp’s message.⁵⁶

While the government had previously alluded to their aristocratic aims for the division of counties, they had never done so quite so emphatically and in direct defiance of Barnes and The Times.⁵⁷ The government defeated Hughes Hughes’s amendment by a majority of 109, but only after many government supporters were heavily whipped.⁵⁸ Still, forty-nine pro-reform MPs rebelled and the government majority was helped by the votes of at least sixteen anti-reform MPs and the abstention of several high-profile Tories, including Peel, Croker and Henry Goulburn. All three had signalled their support for the division of counties during the debate.⁵⁹ Peel welcomed it on the basis that it would allow ‘gentlemen of landed property’ to retain a ‘fair share of influence’ in the electoral system, and the moderate reformer and MP for Cirencester, Joseph Cripps, reasoned that if division was ‘properly arranged’ it ‘would be advantageous to the agricultural interest’.⁶⁰

Althorp’s statement, the support it received from moderates and anti-reformers, and the failure of Hughes Hughes’s proposed amendment, rather predictably, angered Barnes. In stark contrast to his conciliatory tone of days earlier, and The Times’s wider coverage of reform since November 1830, Barnes published a series of ferocious editorials opposing the government and the reform bill. On 15 August, he expressed his disgust at being ‘let behind the curtain by his lordship [Althorp]’, calling the division of counties an ‘abominable clause’. His tirade continued:

What was the professed object of the bill? … Why, the national grievance was, aristocratic power, – more properly speaking, oligarchic power, and to talk of ‘mere popularity’ having too much weight in the county representation under the present system, is a direct insult to the common sense of the country.

The only means, Barnes proposed, of saving the country from the ‘rotten county system’ would be to introduce the ballot.⁶¹ He continued his onslaught the next day, calling for popular meetings to pressure the government over the division of counties, which Barnes suggested revealed the reform bill to be ‘corrupted in its core’.⁶² Barnes, albeit briefly, sought to revive his status as an organiser of mass reform agitation. On the following day, in an attempt to demonstrate popular anger against the clause, he explained that The Times ‘continue[d] to receive innumerable letters on the reform bill’. He also celebrated Hughes Hughes’s intention to move for a ‘rejection of the county-mongering clause’ during the Commons report stage.⁶³

Within days of Barnes’s outburst the pro-reform Morning Herald offered its support to The Times, as did the Leeds Mercury and the influential radical-Whig periodical the Examiner.⁶⁴ Added to the Morning Chronicle’s opposition, for a brief period the highest selling and most respected organs of the pro-reform press opposed the government. The Tory press rejoiced at this apparent break in the pro-reform consensus. The Morning Post commented, ‘the darling bill … has suddenly lost all credit among those who have hitherto been its most furious supporters’ and John Bull remarked, ‘it seems that the bubble is bursting – the framers and supporters of the thing are at loggerheads’.⁶⁵

The ferocity of Barnes’s campaign shocked Westminster. Viscount Duncannon asked Brougham (known for his close links to Barnes), ‘why is The Times writing so violently against us?’⁶⁶ Althorp labelled Barnes a ‘villain’ and stated that ‘he might do his worst’, before threatening to abolish stamp duty in order to remove The Times’s competitive advantage over its rivals. By 18 August The Times’s hostility had reportedly ‘been the general subject of conversation in the Commons for three nights’.⁶⁷ Aside from an ideological opposition to the division of counties, the ferocity of The Times’s attack can also be attributed to an ongoing dispute between Barnes and the foreign office over the recent Dutch invasion of Belgium, and the publication of a letter in the Globe in late July, which contained what Barnes believed was a defamatory statement against The Times’s Lisbon correspondent written by the foreign secretary, Viscount Palmerston.⁶⁸

In response, the cabinet stepped up its public relations efforts. On 17 August a letter, evidently written by someone connected to the cabinet, was printed in the Morning Chronicle.⁶⁹ It criticised The Times for not raising concerns over the division of counties earlier, and warned the paper that the only beneficiaries of continued dissent would be the enemies of reform.⁷⁰ On the same day, Thomas Young, Lord Melbourne’s private secretary, was sent to appease Barnes, prompting a public apology for the latter’s ‘angry’ language over the division of counties. However, Young’s visit did not affect The Times’s opposition to the issue, as Barnes still trusted that public opinion was on his side.⁷¹ Althorp, desirous of avoiding Barnes, then appealed directly to the public by responding to correspondence objecting to the division of counties from the recently formed Northern Political Union. In a letter published widely across the national and provincial press, Althorp explained that the division of counties would not give ‘undue influence to the aristocracy’, since the ‘great landed proprietor[s]’ would only be able to secure at least one seat per county division. Only rarely, he stated, would ‘any one man’s influence [be] so overwhelming’ that he might secure both seats.⁷²

The government was dealt an additional blow in its attempts to appease Barnes on 18 August, when it was defeated over the Chandos clause. Combined with the division of counties, the enfranchisement of £50 tenants-at-will in the counties (whom he had termed ‘a numerous body of dependent vassals’), seemed proof to Barnes that the vested interests of the aristocracy had hijacked the reform bill.⁷³ In response, Barnes called for the borough franchise to be reduced to £5 or £6 in order to prevent the extension of borough boundaries. He argued that this would counteract the effects of the division of counties and the Chandos clause, by ensuring a sufficient number of independent urban voters in divided counties.⁷⁴ Over the following fortnight Barnes continued to print critical editorials and letters, and by the end of August the Tory press had started to speculate that the government was close to resignation.⁷⁵ Then, without warning on 3 September Barnes called a ceasefire. He told his readers that he still objected to the division of counties, but informed them that ‘the point is … settled against us’.⁷⁶

This sudden about-turn can be explained by a number of factors. The increased efforts of the government to reach out to Barnes and increasing Tory speculation about a government resignation had clearly moderated his mood – did he really want the reform bill to be lost because of The Times? Furthermore, reports by the end of August had provided contradictory impressions as to the success of Barnes’s attempts to rally public opinion. Leicestershire and Derbyshire were apparently sufficiently agitated, but Kent, Nottinghamshire and ‘one or two other counties’ had reportedly not expressed much alarm.⁷⁷ Finally, on 1 September the government announced the names of the commissioners who would be responsible for redefining England’s parliamentary boundaries. As the following chapter will explore, the majority of these men were active members of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and had been recruited at the behest of the society’s president, Lord Brougham. As well as being a frequent breakfast partner, Brougham was Barnes’s closest ally in the Grey cabinet.⁷⁸ The division of counties, Barnes was surely assured, was now in safe hands.

Conclusion

The Times’s retreat signalled the end of a concerted pro-reform opposition to the division of counties, which remained a key component of the third version of the government’s reform bill when it was reintroduced in December 1831. Crucially, by the time the issue was debated again in January 1832, the government had been able to secure the approval of sitting county MPs for the recently completed proposals of the boundary commission. The Times still opposed the division of counties, but by early 1832 Barnes had accepted that a parliamentary rebellion was off the cards and declined to initiate a second campaign on the issue.⁷⁹ Although The Times was unable to influence the government to abandon the division of counties, the episode remains important. It reveals that between 1831 and 1832 respectable reformers could differ wildly from the government as to the potential impact of the reform legislation, a notion that existing historiography usually fails to acknowledge.⁸⁰ The government hoped divided counties would rejuvenate structures of aristocratic and localised influence in the counties, but for Barnes, the policy was a direct attack on the influence a liberal press might have exerted over undivided county electorates. By backing down, Barnes and the pro-reform public accepted that while less than ideal, the bill was the best reformers could hope for. This argument was re-affirmed by the political unions as they attempted to position themselves as national peacekeepers during November and December 1831.⁸¹

Privileging the issue of English boundaries in the initial development of the reform legislation has also revealed the extent to which different parliamentarians, local officials, the press and the public could engage and influence the reform process within the ‘consultation’ model posited by Salmon.⁸² The government was willing to listen to local officials and anti-reform parliamentary opinion to make practical and procedural adjustments to their proposals. The amendments to the boundary, redistribution and franchise clauses in the reform legislation that took place following the receipt of parliamentary returns in early 1831, and the government’s eventual agreement to allow parliamentary scrutiny of boundaries (rather than use privy council committees) revealed where consultation did lead to change. When it came to extra-parliamentary forces the government was much more cautious. As this and subsequent chapters demonstrate, the public were allowed to engage with the reform process through formal channels such as parliamentary returns, official engagement with boundary commissioners and local petitions highlighting issues with data or proposed boundaries. However, while the government was perfectly happy to co-opt the power of ‘public opinion’ to urge the necessity of reform at multiple points between 1830 and 1832, it was not willing to yield to newspaper editors, such as Barnes at The Times, who sought to use the weight of ‘public opinion’ to make demands for substantial radical, or reactionary, amendments to the reform legislation.

Maintaining such a stance with the press was a delicate balancing act. The dispute with The Times during the summer of 1831 provided an important wake-up call to those Whigs who after sixty years in opposition had not immediately understood the need to institute a public relations strategy. Through their junior secretaries and their new parliamentary solicitor from 1833, Joseph Parkes, a concerted effort was made to institute better relationships with Fleet Street, and insulate the details of the government’s reform agenda, as far as was possible, from the pressure of public opinion.⁸³ The short-term fallout from the episode, however, could not be controlled. Significantly, the ferocity of The Times’s disagreement with the government over the division of counties underpinned a wider perception in parliament of a shift in popular support for the reform legislation by September 1831.⁸⁴ This has never been fully appreciated in histories of the reform legislation, and explains why by mid-September, the political cartoonist John Doyle (Figure 2.1) was able to note the irony of the Grey ministry trying to rebuild crumbling popular backing for the bill, by recourse nonetheless to a newly supportive Times. Such perceptions proved vital in terms of persuading the Lords to divide against the bill in October 1831.⁸⁵

Notes

1. 1. For recent popular histories see E. Pearce, Reform!: The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act (London, 2004); A. Fraser, Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832 (London, 2014).

2. 2. Salmon, ‘The English Reform Legislation, 1831–32’, in D. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons, 1820–32, i. (Cambridge, 2009), 411.

3. 3. PP1830–31 (247), ii. 200–203.

4. 4. C. W. New, Lord Durham, 128; DSC, Grey, B46/1/36, ‘Appendix No. 5’, 1–2.

5. 5. Hansard, 3, ii. (3 Mar. 1831), 1329; Hansard, 3, iii. (18 Apr. 1831), 1519–20; C. W. New, Lord Durham (Oxford, 1929), 113; Lord Russell, An Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution from the Reign of Henry VII to the Present Time (London, 1821), 183; Salmon, ‘English Reform Legislation’, 407–10; D. C. Moore, ‘The Other Face of Reform’, Victorian Studies, 5,1 (1961), 31–4.

6. 6. Hansard, 3, ii. (1 Mar. 1831), 1074; M. Casey, ‘Yorkshire’, in D. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons, 1820–1832 (Cambridge, 2009), iii. 245–53.

7. 7. Lord Colchester, A Political Diary 1820–1830 (London, 1881), ii. 329.

8. 8. Hansard, 3, ii. (1 Mar 1831), 1074–5; Hansard, 3, v. (11 Aug. 1831), 1226–8; New, Lord Durham, 128.

9. 9. DSC, Grey, B46/1/38, ‘Reform Bill for England and Wales’, 1–10.

10. 10. DSC, Grey, B46/1/27, ‘Reform Committee Minutes … Dec. 11 & 14 1830’, 1–2; DSC, Grey, B46/1/27, B46/1/33, ‘England, reform bill … based on Lord J. Russell’s plan of reform’, 1–10.

11. 11. DSC, Grey, B46/1/38, ‘Reform Bill for England and Wales’, 1–10.

12. 12. H. Brougham, The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham (London, 1871), iii. 92–3.

13. 13. PP1830–31 (338), x, 1–62.

14. 14. P. Salmon, ‘ “Reform Should Begin at Home”: English Municipal and Parliamentary Reform, 1818–32’, in C. Jones, P. Salmon and R. Davis (eds.), Partisan Politics, Principles and Reform in Parliament and the Constituencies, 1689–1880 (Edinburgh, 2004), 93–113.

15. 15. DSC, Grey, B46/2/36, Russell to Durham, 13 Feb. 1831, 5; Hansard, 3, ii. (21 Dec. 1830), 6–26.

16. 16. PP1830–31 (202), x. 1–13.

17. 17. M. Brock, The Great Reform Act (London, 1973), 142–3, F. T. Baring, Journals and Correspondence of Sir Francis Thornhill Baring (London, 1905), 83; D. Le Marchant (ed.), Memoir of John Charles Viscount Althorp (London, 1876), 294–6; Brougham, Life and Times, iii. 92–3.

18. 18. DSC, Grey, B46/2/36, Russell to Durham, 13 Feb. 1831, 1–5.

19. 19. Brock, Reform Act, 142–3.

20. 20. H. Clokie and J. Robinson, Royal Commissions of Inquiry (New York, 1937), 46–8; DSC, Grey, B46/1/55, ‘Printed paper endorsed by Lord Howick, 4 April 1832’, 1–16.

21. 21. F. Brockington, ‘Public Health at the Privy Council 1831–34’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 16, 2 (1961), 161–85; National Archives, Privy Council, 2/211A, 213.

22. 22. PP1830–31 (247), ii. 200–203.

23. 23. Hansard, 3, ii. (1 Mar. 1831), 1075.

24. 24. Anonymous, ‘Reform in Parliament’, Quarterly Review, 45 (1831), 323; Hansard, 3, iii. (21 Mar. 1831), 687–8; Hansard, 3, iii. (22 Mar. 1831), 764–800; Hansard, 3, iii. (24 Mar. 1831), 901; Hansard, 3, iii. (28 Mar. 1831), 983–99; Hansard, 3, iii. (14 Apr. 1831), 1327–8; Hansard, 3, iii. (18 Apr. 1831), 1550; Hansard, 3, iii. (21 Apr. 1831), 1742–7.

25. 25. Hansard, 3, iii. (28 Mar. 1831), 1030.

26. 26. Hansard, 3, ii. (1 Mar. 1831), 1076; Hansard, 3, iii. (22 Mar. 1831), 800.

27. 27. Morning Post, 9 Apr. 1831, 19 Apr. 1831.

28. 28. Morning Post, 23 Apr., 12, 20, 21, 26 May, 13 June 1831.

29. 29. Morning Post, 23 Apr. 1831.

30. 30. Morning Post, 21 May 1831.

31. 31. John Bull, 25 Apr. 1831.

32. 32. The Times, 2 May 1831.

33. 33. Morning Chronicle, 7 May 1831.

34. 34. Morning Post, 12 May 1831.

35. 35. Hansard, 3, iv. (12 July 1831), 1117; Hansard, 3, iv. (13 July 1831), 1200, 1215–16; D. Fisher, ‘Sugden, Edward’, in Fisher, Commons, vii. 352–6.

36. 36. Hansard, 3, iv. (13 July 1831), 1227; S. Farrell, ‘Stanley, Edward’, in Fisher, Commons, vii. 257–59.

37. 37. Hansard, 3, iv. (6 July 1831), 819; D. Fisher, ‘Campbell, John’, in Fisher, Commons, iv. 532–8.

38. 38. Hansard, 3, iv. (13 July 1831), 1200; PP1831 (232), iii. 10–14.

39. 39. Leicester Chronicle, 14 May 1831; S. Farrell, ‘Bennett, John’, in Fisher, Commons, iv. 238–40; M. Escott, ‘Norfolk’, Fisher, Commons, ii. 717.

40. 40. A. Wadsworth, ‘Newspaper Circulations 1800–1954’, Transactions Manchester Statistical Society, 122 (1954–5), 9; PP1831–2 (290), xxxiv. 119.

41. 41. The petitions data come from the Leverhulme project ‘Petitions and Parliament in the Long Nineteenth Century’ (RPG-2016–097) led by Richard Huzzey and Henry Miller; PP1831 (263), iii. 421. The Times, 1 Dec. 1830; N. D. LoPatin, Political Unions, Popular Politics and the Great Reform Act of 1832 (Basingstoke, 1999), 174–9.

42. 42. Anonymous, History of The Times: “The Thunderer” in the Making 1785–1841 (London, 1935), 338.

43. 43. Cobbett’s Political Register, 9 July 1831.

44. 44. Birmingham Journal, 2 July 1831.

45. 45. Hansard, 3, iv. (6 July 1831), 851.

46. 46. The Times, 9 July 1831.

47. 47. The Times, 9 July 1831.

48. 48. The Times, 11 July 1831; SRO, Hatherton, D260/M/F/5/26/7, 11 July 1831, 62.

49. 49. The Times, 15, 23 July, 18 Aug. 1831.

50. 50. SRO, Hatherton, D260/M/F/5/26/7, 24–25 July 1831, 81–4.

51. 51. Morning Post, 25 July 1831.

52. 52. History of Parliament, Unpublished Parkes Transcripts, Parkes to Tennyson, 14 Aug. 1831; The Times, 11 Aug. 1831; Morning Chronicle, 11 Aug. 1831.

53. 53. The Times, 15 July 1831.

54. 54. Hansard, 3, v. (11 Aug. 1831), 1225–6.

55. 55. Hansard, 3, v. (11 Aug. 1831), 1226–9.

56. 56. Hansard, 3, v. (11 Aug. 1831), 1226–9.

57. 57. Hansard, 3, iii. (28 Mar. 1831), 998.

58. 58. SRO, Hatherton, D260/M/F/5/26/7, 11 Aug. 1831, 114.

59. 59. The Times, 12, 13 Aug. 1831.

60. 60. Hansard, 3, v. (11 Aug. 1831), 1230, 1236–7; Morning Post, 12 Aug. 1831.

61. 61. The Times, 15 Aug. 1831.

62. 62. The Times, 16 Aug. 1831.

63. 63. The Times, 17 Aug. 1831.

64. 64. The Examiner, 14 Aug. 1831; Leeds Mercury, 20 Aug. 1831; Standard, 3 Sept. 1831.

65. 65. Morning Post, 16 Aug. 1831; Standard, 16 Aug. 1831.

66. 66. A. Aspinall, Politics and the Press (London, 1949), 251; A. Aspinall, Three Early Nineteenth Century Diaries (London, 1952), 116–28.

67. 67. Aspinall, Three Diaries, 117–18; A. Kriegel, The Holland House Diaries, 1831–1840 (London, 1977), 29.

68. 68. News International Archives, Barnes Papers, T/ED/BAR/1, Barnes to Lord Brougham, 27 July 1831, 13; Aspinall, Politics and the Press, 251; Weekly Dispatch, 21 Aug. 1831.

69. 69. Aspinall, Politics and the Press, 243.

70. 70. Morning Chronicle, 17 Aug. 1831.

71. 71. The Times, 18 Aug. 1831.

72. 72. Evening Mail, 2 Sept. 1831; Monmouthshire Merlin, 3 Sept. 1831; Sheffield Independent, 3 Sept. 1831; Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 10 Sept. 1831; LoPatin, Political Unions, 175.

73. 73. The Times, 20 Aug. 1831.

74. 74. The Times, 22, 23 Aug. 1831.

75. 75. The Times, 25 Aug., 1 Sept. 1831; Aspinall, Three Diaries, 121–8; HOP, Parkes Transcripts, Parkes to Tennyson, 24 Aug. 1831.

76. 76. The Times, 3 Sept. 1831.

77. 77. The Times, 22 Aug. 1831, 6, 25 Aug. 1831; Examiner, 21 Aug. 1831.

78. 78. Anonymous, History of The Times, 457–61.

79. 79. The Times, 26 Jan. 1832.

80. 80. The exception being, N. Lopatin-Lummis, ‘The 1832 Reform Act Debate: Should the Suffrage be Based on Property or Taxpaying?’, JBS, 46 (2007), 320–45.

81. 81. LoPatin, Political Unions, 87–130.

82. 82. Salmon, ‘English Reform Legislation’, 411.

83. 83. E. Wasson, ‘The Whigs and the Press, 1800–50’, Parliamentary History, 25, 1 (2006), 68–87.

84. 84. Brock, Reform Act, 223; Moore, ‘Other Face’, 29–30.

85. 85. Brock, Reform Act, 240; Duke of Wellington (ed.), Despatches, Correspondence, and Memoranda of Field Marshall Arthur Duke Wellington (1878), vii. 531–2; Aspinall, Three Diaries, 121–8.