Page 42 - History 2020

“I am unwilling to open a door which I see no prospect of being able to close. I will

continue my opposition to the last, believing as I do, that it is the first step, not
directly to Revolution, but to a series of changes which will affect the property, and
totally change the character of the mixed constitution of this country. On this ground I
take my stand, not opposed to a well considered Reform of any of our institutions
which need reform, but opposed to this Reform.”

In 1884 the vote was extended again, to male householders in county (i.e. rural)
constituencies. It was generally agreed that the 1867 Act had made this inevitable; it

was clearly illogical to give them the vote in the boroughs but not the counties.
(even so the Tory House of Lords opposed it!) The new Act brought the counties in
line with the boroughs. 5.5 million adult males could now vote; but 40% of them
could not; nor could any woman*. The 1884 Reform Act is hardly well-known or
celebrated; Tombs calls it “one of the least remembered great events in our history”.
Thus, the Whig History idea that the 1832 Reform Act opened some kind of floodgate
to democracy is at best a very partial truth.

*Surprisingly, this is not quite true. In a Manchester by-election in 1867, a woman who met the
new property qualification to vote was registered by mistake and voted. Following a national
campaign many other women also registered. In a test case, the issue the court had to decide was -
which applied? Was it the 1850 Interpretation Act, which stated that in all legislation “the
masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include Females unless the contrary is expressly
provided”? Or was it Parliament’s rejection of an amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill, proposed by
John Stuart Mill, substituting the word “person” for “man”, which would have allowed women to
vote? The judge decided for the latter. He argued that the “exemption” of women from the vote
was nothing to do with “fickleness of judgment” or “any under-rating of the sex either in point of
intellect or worth”; instead, the exemption from “public functions” was “founded upon motives of
decorum, and was a privilege of that sex.” However, it was too late to prevent over 80 women from
voting in the 1868 general election. Not until the 1874 general election were they all struck off the
roll and normality was restored, at least until 1918.

Britain’s road to democracy was indeed a long and winding one.

Like Burke’s philosophy of conservatism, the Whig Interpretation of History provided
the ruling elite with another useful justification for their existence. It made British

history seem like a seamless story of orderly, purposeful change. The reality was a lot
messier.

Conclusion to Part One: What is Britain’s “story of revolution”?
In short, that revolutions are philosophically undesirable and historically
unnecessary. This is of course a story that suits the vested interests of the possessing
and ruling classes. However, through Burke’s philosophy of conservatism and