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The Mid-Nineteenth Century Electoral Structure*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
It is far too early to talk with any real certainty about the mid-nineteenth century electoral structure. The very materials of which it was built are in dispute, let alone the shape of the edifice. A deference school of historians is challenging traditional notions of the growth of political individualism in the period, while so-called quantitative historians are beginning to question the assumptions and approach of both deference historians and traditionalists. Serious and detailed study of the questions involved has hardly begun. Still, some comment on the present state of the controversy may not be entirely out of place. An enduring interpretation can only be constructed of sound materials; and I am by no means certain of the soundness of some of those now being put forward for our use.
W. O. Aydelotte, in a paper read a couple of years ago and soon to be published in a series of essays entitled The History of Parliamentary Behavior, notes the divergence of opinion among historians on the role of the electorate in shaping parliamentary opinion after 1832. As he rightly suggests, Norman Gash in his Politics in the Age of Peel appears to be of two minds on the subject, depending on whether one reads his introduction or his text. In the former Professor Gash stresses the increase of popular influence on Parliament, in the latter the continuance of traditional influences over the mass of the electorate. D. C. Moore comes down heavily on the side of the latter influences, contending that a relatively few leaders of what he has called “deference communities” represented effective electoral opinion, which was simply registered by the mass of the electorate.
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- Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1976
Footnotes
*
This paper was originally read before a panel of the American Historical Association's convention at Atlanta in December 1975.
References
1 W.O. Aydelotte, “Constituency Influence on the British House of Commons, 1841-1847,” esp. footnotes 1 and 2, in Aydelotte, W. O., ed., The History of Parliamentary Behavior (Princeton, 1976).Google Scholar
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3 Aydelotte, “Constituency Influence.”
4 Olney, R. J., Lincolnshire Politics, 1832-1885 (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar; Davis, Richard W., Political Change and Continuity, 1790-1885: A Buckinghamshire Study (Newton Abbot, Devon and Hamden, Conn., 1972).Google Scholar
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9 Professor Aydelotte is making new punches to take account of whether an M.P. was re-elected in the general election or thereafter, of whether he was returned by the same constituency or another one, and whether he stood for re-election and failed. The results of his new investigations will be highly interesting.
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18 Bucks Herald, 6 August 1859.
19 Buckinghamshire Record Office, Tindal Papers, “Joshua Dell,” 14 May 1859.
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25 Professor Moore, for example, backs up a generalization about explanations of voters' promises recorded in canvassing books having nothing to do with issues by referring his readers to the Liberal canvassing book for Cullompton, Devon, (“The Matter of the Missing Contests,” pp. 108–9)Google Scholar. One canvassing book hardly constitutes an impressive statistic. Presumably Professor Moore has others in mind, of which he thinks this one a good example.
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