With the death of Charles
II religion once again dominated the political agenda.
Anti Catholic riots were regular occurrences and when
James II, a Catholic took the throne the antagonisms between the religions
increased. James II attempted to impose
personal rule and his own Catholic faith.
He dismissed Parliament and tried to get his own way through the
judiciary. A Roman Catholic army
officer was brought to trial under the Test Acts:
The Lord Chief Justice
read the verdict on behalf of his almost unanimous colleagues. It could hardly have been clearer. Or more subversive:
We think we may very well
declare the opinion of the court to be that the King may dispense in this case…
upon these grounds:
1. That the Kings of England are
sovereign princes.
2. That the laws of England are the
King’s laws.
3. That therefore ‘tis an
inseparable prerogative of the Kings of England to dispense with penal laws in
particular cases, and upon necessary reasons.
4. That of those reasons and those necessities the King
himself is sole judge.
5. That this is not a trust
invested in… the King by the people, but the ancient remains of the sovereign
power and prerogative of the Kings of England.
The ruling transformed
Parliament into a mere sleeping partner in the constitution: it might pass what
laws it liked; whether and on whom they could be enforced was purely up to the
king. Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity by David Starkey
This was dynamite and
plunged the country straight back to the times of Charles I and the “divine right of kings”. The English Protestants were fuming. Once again they could see Roman Catholicism
in the ascendancy. James tried to
ameliorate the position by promising religious tolerance but matters came to a
head with the birth of a son. Questions
were raised about the legitimacy of the boy but the writing was on the
wall. Tories and Whigs for once were
united and decided that for English Protestantism to survive, Mary, the
daughter of James II should be sent for to re-establish the Protestant
religion. Four Whig Peers and Three
Tories invited William III of Orange (husband of Mary) to invade Britain and
take the Crown. William agreed. The political classes were quite willing to
remove their Leader. They invited
William but used the invitation to set their terms.
William III of Orange was
the son of Charles II’s elder sister Mary.
As such he was the grandson of Charles I. He married Mary, the eldest daughter of
James II. His strength was that both he
and Mary were strong Protestants.
Fortunately for England
William was used to negotiation. He did
not subscribe to the “divine right of
kings”. At his home in the
Netherlands the House of Orange was not a sovereign house, but the head of it
was “first among equals”. We were about to see the creation of the
modern Monarchy. The ramifications for
the Monarchy and the people were huge.
Parliament was now supreme.
William’s first and
foremost duty was to the Dutch States.
He had to obtain their approval to claim the English throne on his
wife’s behalf. He got it.
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In an invasion as
significant as that of 1066 William and his forces landed at Torbay in Devon on
5th November 1688, and then marched to Exeter. William had 500 ships, 20,000 soldiers and a
further 20,000 marines. A huge
invasion, but nobody in England seemed to mind. At first James decided to resist, but as his
Generals deserted him for William all the stuffing was knocked out of him. William sent a strong detachment of troops
to London and arrested James. He was
taken to Rochester and on 23rd December, allowed to escape to France
and exile. Without a shot being fired
William was in control of England.
This is almost
unprecedented. In order to stop
Catholicism people sought out a new King, but they also said “only come on our terms” and those terms
were a manifestation of ideas which had emerged over two centuries. We have an invasion, we have a new King, and
yet he is invited in on terms, which he accepts. The fundamental institutions of the United
Kingdom are maintained and there is continuity. Only the Monarch can recall Parliament so
William used the precedent of Charles II in calling for a Convention. This formal assembly of Parliament was an
exciting and extraordinary situation which was unrolling. What would be the outcome? It was not all plain sailing:
After the final departure
of James II (Christmas 1688), the Prince of Orange issued letters summoning a
Convention, which met on 22 January 1689.
The first business of this Convention was to settle the question who
should be King of England. It was resolved
that James II, “having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom
by breaking the original contract between king and people, and by the advice of
Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws and
withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, hath abdicated the government and the
throne is thereby become vacant”. Many
of the Tories still clung to the theory that James was divinely appointed, and
therefore must be king as long as he was alive; they wished for a Regency ruling
in his name. Lord Nottingham proposed
that the Crown should go to Mary, James’s elder daughter, with her husband,
William of Orange, acting as Regent.
But here William intervened; he flatly refused to rule in his wife’s
name. He would have the Crown or
nothing – otherwise he would return to Holland. It was then decided to offer the Crown to
William and Mary as joint sovereigns, and this offer was accepted (February
1689). A History of Britain Section 5 1688-Present Day by E Carter & R Mears
This was an unprecedented
situation for an extraordinary time. England
had never before had joint sovereigns, and it has never happened since. The offer was not made with unanimous
agreement. Of course it can be argued
that the Tories had simply backed the wrong man, which seems more plausible
than that they still believed in the “divine
right of kings”. We had now reached
a point in time when it tended to be only Kings themselves who thought they had
divine right. In the end it was
Parliament, which decided to offer the Crown to William and Mary, effectively ending
the principle of inheritance, which over the centuries Kings had tried to
enshrine. All future Monarchs would take their place as a result of a decision of
Parliament.
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The Convention consisted
of both Houses of Parliament. Mary had
refused to be sole ruler. In the end,
Parliament agreed to a face-saving compromise.
The exercise of sovereignty would be vested solely in William, although
Mary would administer effectively during his long absences on military
campaigns. Having given William the crown,
Parliament now restricted the powers that he, or any future monarch, could
exercise. William and Mary did not take
the throne totally unopposed. On the
day of their coronation, news arrived that James had landed in Ireland with a
force of French mercenaries. The Irish
troops that he then gathered around him were unseasoned and his own
incompetence and indolence made matters worse.
The result was James's final shattering defeat at the Battle of the
Boyne on 12th July 1690 – an event still commemorated in Northern
Ireland.
The Convention had not
been at all smooth water. There was
much debate, but the incontrovertible fact was that the country found itself
with:
James, still very much
alive, if not in full possession of his mental faculties, or indeed present in
the country itself. Faced with these
facts, the Commons made up of James’s Whig enemies and under the chairmanship
of Richard Hampden, son of Charles I’s implacable enemy, made a bold resolution. It was also a daring constitutional innovation. James II, they declared, had broken the
“original contract” between king and subjects.
He had also violated the “fundamental laws” of the realm. And most importantly, by removing himself
from the country, he had abdicated the throne.
The country had not been conquered by William; James had not been
deposed. The king had deserted his
people, not the other way round. It was
a piece of fiction, but it was a very convenient one."Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity" by David Starkey.
Parliament had the confidence to draw up the Declaration of Rights, but it was still
undemocratic. The balance of power had
changed and Parliament was determined to enshrine it in Statute. The Bill of Rights is one of the most
important constitutional events in our history.
All All was now ready for the formal offer
of the crown to William and Mary in the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Mary, who had arrived in England only the
day previously and, it was widely felt, had stepped into Mary of Modena’s
apartments; her possessions and her very habits with indecent glee joined her
husband under the Cloth of Estate. The
Lords on the right, and the Commons on the left, led by their Speakers,
approached the steps of the throne; the clerk read out the Bill of Rights and a
nobleman offered William and Mary the crown in the name of the Convention as
the “representative of the nation”. Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity by David Starkey.
The “Declaration
of Rights” was read out at their coronation. William would ask for, not demand funds from
parliament to fight his wars. The Bill
of Rights put into statute many of the limitations on the royal prerogative,
which had been determined over the past hundred years. William and Mary, in accepting the throne,
had to consent to govern “according to the Statutes in Parliament agreed
on”. Under the Bill of Rights “No monarch may be a Roman Catholic or
married to a Roman Catholic”. The
implications for freedom, justice democracy and liberty, which were at the
heart of the Bill of Rights, had huge significance.
In our definition of democracy there should be no
religious discrimination. The monarch
should be monarch of the whole nation regardless of religion. In other words they should be “Defender of faiths” rather than “Defender of the faith”. By specifying that the monarch may not be a
Roman Catholic they were demonstrating religious discrimination.
Parliamentary
privilege is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
It states “…the freedome of speech
and debates or proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or
questioned in a court or a place out of Parlyament.”
The Bill of Rights, 1689, removed
once and for all the King’s claim to certain important prerogatives. The King’s power to suspend or dispense with
laws, to levy money by pretence of the prerogative and without grant of
Parliament, and to raise or keep an army in times of peace was henceforth
abolished. Freedom of speech and of
proceedings in Parliament and the rights of subjects to petition the King were
all re-asserted. From 1689 till the
present day, Parliament has sat every year because it declined to grant William
(or his successors) either money or a standing Army for more than one year at a
time.
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The Declaration of Rights was made on 13 February 1689. It is so critical for the Constitution of
the United Kingdom that we set it out in full as recorded in the Journals of the House of Commons. It is interesting in that it also gives
the reasons why the Declaration of Rights
was felt necessary.
THE DECLARATION OF THE LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL,
AND COMMONS, ASSEMBLED AT WESTMINSTER
Whereas the late King James the Second, by the
assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges, and ministers, employed by him,
did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion, and the laws
and liberties of this kingdom.
By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of
laws, and the execution of laws, without consent of parliament;
By committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates, for humbly
petitioning to be excused from concurring to the said assumed power;
By issuing and causing to be executed a commission, under the great seal,
for erecting a court, called, the court of commissioners for ecclesiastical
causes;
By levying money for and to the use of the crown, by
pretence of prerogative, for other time, and in other manner, than the same was
granted by parliament;
By raising and keeping a standing army within the
kingdom in time of peace, without consent of parliament; and quartering
soldiers contrary to law;
By causing several good subjects, being protestants, to be
disarmed, at the same time, when papists were both armed and employed contrary
to law;
By violating the freedom on election of members to serve
in parliament;
By prosecutions in the court of king’s bench, for
matters and causes cognizable only in parliament:
And by divers other arbitrary and illegal courses:
And whereas, of
late years, partial, corrupt, and unqualified, persons have been returned, and
served on juries in trials, and, particularly, divers jurors in trials for high
treason, which were not freeholders;
And excessive bail hath been required of persons
committed in criminal cases, to elude the benefit of the laws made for the
liberty of the subjects;
And excessive fines have been imposed;
And illegal and cruel punishments inflicted;
And several grants and promises made of fines and
forfeitures, before any
conviction or judgement against the persons upon whom the same were to be
levied;
All which are utterly and directly contrary to the known
laws, and statutes, and freedom of this realm:
And whereas the said King James the Second having
abdicated the government; and the throne being thereby vacant;
His Highness the Prince of Orange whom it hath pleased
Almighty God to make the glorious instrument of delivering this kingdom from
popery and arbitrary power, did, by the advice of the Lords spiritual and
temporal, and divers principal persons of the Commons, cause letters to be
written to the Lords spiritual and temporal, being Protestants; and other
letters, to the several counties, cities, universities, boroughs, and Cinque
Ports, for the chusing of such persons to represent them as were of right to be
sent to parliament, to meet and sit at Westminster upon the 12th day of
January, in this year 1688, in order to such an establishment, as that their
religion, laws, and liberties, might not again be in danger of being subverted:
Upon which letters, elections having been accordingly
made;
And thereupon, the said Lords spiritual and temporal,
and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters, and elections, being now
assembled in a full and free representative of this nation, taking into their
most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do,
in the first place, (as their ancestors, in like case, have usually done) for
the vindication and asserting their ancient rights and liberties, declare;
That the pretended power of suspending of laws by regal
authority, without
consent of parliament is illegal;
That the pretended power of dispensing with laws, or the
execution of laws, by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of
late, is illegal;
That the commission for erecting the late court of
commissioners for
ecclesiastical causes, and all other commissions and courts of like
nature, are illegal and pernicious; i.e., 1689.
That levying of money for or to the use of the crown, by
the pretence of
prerogative, without grant of parliament, for longer time, or in other
manner, than the
same is or shall be granted, is illegal;
That it is the right of the subjects to petition the
king; and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;
That the raising or keeping a standing army within the
kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of parliament, is against
law;
That the subjects, which are protestants, may have arms
for their defence, suitable to their conditions, as allowed by law;
That election of members of parliament ought to be free;
That the freedom and debates or proceedings in
parliament ought not to be
impeached or questioned in any court or place out of parliament;
That excessive bail ought not to be required; nor
excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted;
That jurors ought to be impanelled and returned; and
jurors, which pass upon men in trials for high treason, ought to be
freeholders;
That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of
particular persons, before conviction, are illegal and void;
And that, for redress of all grievances, and for the
amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws, parliaments ought to be
held frequently.
And they do claim, demand, and insist upon, all and
singular the premises, as their undoubted rights and liberties; and that no
declarations, judgements, doings, or proceedings, to the prejudice of the
people, in any of the said premises, ought, in any way, to be drawn hereafter
with consequence, or example.
To which demand of their rights they are particularly
encouraged by the
Declaration of his Highness the Prince of Orange; as being the only means
for obtaining a full redress and remedy therein.
Having therefore an entire confidence, that his said
Highness the Prince of Orange will perfect a deliverance so far advanced by
him; and will still preserve them from the violation of their rights, which
they have here asserted; and from all other attempts upon their religion,
rights and liberties;
The said Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons,
assembled at Westminster, do resolve,
That William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange,
be, and be declared, King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the
dominions thereunto belonging; to hold the crown and royal dignity of the said
kingdoms and dominions to them the said Prince and princess, during their
lives, and the life of the survivor of them:
And that the sole
and full exercise of the regal power be only in, and executed by, the said
Prince of Orange, in the names of the said prince and princess, during their
joint lives; and, after their deceases, the said crown and royal dignity of the
said kingdom and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the said princess:
And, for default
of such issue, to the Princess Ann of Denmark, and the heirs of her body: and,
for default of such issue, to the heirs of the body of the said Prince of
Orange.
And the said Lords spiritual, and temporal, and Commons,
do pray the said Prince and Princess of Orange to accept the same accordingly.
And that the oaths, hereafter mentioned, be taken by all
persons of whom the oaths of allegiance and supremacy might be required by law,
instead of them; and the said oaths of allegiance and supremacy be abrogated.
I, A.B. do
sincerely promise and swear, that I will be faithful, and bear true
allegiance, to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary. So help me
God.
I, A.B. do
swear, that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure, as impious and heretical,
this damnable doctrine and position, That princes excommunicated or deprived by
the pope, or any authority of the see of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by
their subjects, or any one whatsoever. And I do declare, that no foreign
prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have, any
jurisdiction, power, superiority, preheminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or
spiritual, within this realm. So help me God.
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England finally rid
itself of papal interference in the Bill of Rights, although Puritanism was a
political force. Parliament was
supreme. The monarch had to act with
the consent of Parliament. The army was
now under Parliamentary control.
Freedom of speech in Parliament was guaranteed. The law had to be administered in a fair and
just way. All this was part of the Bill
of rights.
This “Glorious Revolution” (1688-9), which determined the future
political history of England, was accompanied by a step forward on the path of
religious toleration. William of Orange
was a Calvinist, and he refused to permit the continued persecution of
Dissenters. By the Toleration Act
(1689), Nonconformist congregations were allowed to worship in their own way,
without interference from the law. They
were not, however, admitted to a share in local or national government, from
which their religion still debarred them; the Corporation Act and the Test Act
remained unrepealed until the nineteenth century. Roman Catholics were not included in the
Toleration Act; though in practise they were allowed to hold their own services
in peace. E. Carter & R. Mears - "A History of Britain Section 5 1688 to present day"
The Test and Corporation
Acts were aimed at the Presbyterians and Catholics preventing them from holding
public office, so the Toleration Act was a minor step forward in reducing
religious discrimination.
On the accession of
William III the number of peers had increased to about 150. Royal patronage was on the increase. The House of Lords being unelected and
unaccountable was part of the legislature and in spite of several reforms, has
remained so, even today.
Ever since 1689
Parliament has sat every year because it refused to grant William or his successor’s
money or a standing army for more than one year at a time.
During the course of
William’s reign England went through some fairly dramatic times and until
William’s death in France in 1701 there was still the threat from James
II. Nevertheless the times were
generally happy. The institutions
re-established themselves and grew in strength. William was determined to resolve the issue
of religion in Scotland. He allowed the Scots to organise their own religion
without interference from England; the Presbyterian Kirk was therefore set up
as the National Church of Scotland.
Scotland
now had a national, democratically controlled church. Every member had the right to take part in
the election of the minister and in the management of the affairs of the
congregation. It is an interesting
phenomena that in both England and Scotland democracy plays a part in the
running and control of the Churches, even though essentially they are based on
faith. The churches themselves were
amongst the first of our democratic institutions and yet were very slow to
support democracy for the people.
In
Ireland a very different picture emerged.
The Protestant Dissenters were not allowed the religious tolerance given
to England and Scotland. This was not
due to William, who having defeated James’s army at the Battle of the Boyne in
1690 went on to sign a Treaty with Patrick Sarsfeld in Limerick in the autumn
of 1691 whereby the Catholics would have as much freedom and liberty as they
had held under Charles II. Sarsfield
left Ireland under the amnesty and joined the Irish Brigade of the French
army.
Limerick was the last
town to hold out against William:
But the Treaty of Limerick
was shamefully broken. King William
himself was anxious to carry out its terms and to treat the Catholics
fairly. But the English parliament was
highly intolerant, and in 1691 passed a law that only Protestants could sit in
the Irish Parliament. This sealed the
fate of the Catholics, whose existence was made miserable by a harsh Penal
Code, begun under William and Mary, and continued under Queen Anne. By this Code Catholics were forbidden to sit
not only in Parliament but on juries; they could not serve in the army, or on
town councils, or enter the teaching profession. They could not buy land, and when one of the
existing Catholic landowners died, his property did not descend to his heir,
but had to be split up among all his children. E. Carter & R. Mears - "A History of Britain Section 5 1688 to present day"
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The Whigs, who had
effected the Revolution, which placed William III on the throne, now enjoyed
power, to the mortification of the discomfited Tories. The land owning Whig oligarchy, which had
put William on the throne, ran the country in its own interests. England prospered and favourable
trade arrangements led in 1690 to the Treaty of Union between England and
Scotland.
In 1694, Sir John Trevor was found
guilty of a “high crime and misdemeanour” in having, as Speaker of the House,
accepted a gratuity of a thousand guineas (an enormous sum by contemporary
standards) from the City of London after passing the Orphans Bill. He was
duly expelled, as was a Mr. Hungerford for receiving a more modest sum of
twenty guineas for his part as chairman of the committee for the bill. This scandal led to the passing of a
resolution in 1695 against outright corruption by acceptance of bribes: “That
the offer of money, or other advantage, to a Member of Parliament for the
promoting of any matter whatsoever, depending or to be transacted in Parliament
is a high crime and misdemeanour”. "Parliament under Blair" by Peter Riddell
This principle is
relevant today. In recent years there
have been several cases where MPs have been accused of accepting money for
promoting issues in Parliament. In 1997
the MP for Beaconsfield resigned as a Parliamentary Candidate in that year’s
General Election for just such a reason.
Also in 1694 the
Triennial Act was passed which was designed to ensure regular meetings of
Parliament, at least once every three years, and to limit the life span of
Parliament to 3 years by a compulsory General Election. A Place Bill to exclude from the Commons all
office holders and recipients of money from the Crown, was narrowly defeated. Many MPs were office holders receiving money
from the Crown. Had these Bills been
passed there would have been a major shake up of the House of Commons. Later legislation was to be passed excluding
office holders from the Commons. This
is why when an MP wishes to resign he accepts the office of “Crown Steward and Bailiff of the “Chiltern
Hundreds”, which being an office of the crown effectively excludes himself
from the Commons.
In 1695 an Act was passed
against bribery and treating (giving gifts to the voters to encourage them to
vote in a particular way) in elections, the first of a series of measures which
have been found requisite from time to time.
The records of the immense sums spent in corrupting the suffrage prove
that this Act was needed. Thomas,
Marquis of Wharton, is calculated to have spent eighty thousand pounds of his
own fortune in electioneering. This
spirited nobleman, who was one of the most energetic Whigs, and largely
instrumental in bringing over the Prince of Orange, has been regarded as the
greatest adept at electioneering which England ever saw. He managed to return between twenty to
thirty members. The Act for Preventing
Charge and Expense in Elections of Members to serve in Parliament stated that
candidates who gave or promised any present or reward to any person having a
vote, for the purpose of influencing their vote, shall be declared not elected.
A
Commons resolution was passed in 1699, which was subsequently amended much
later after Irish independence, which declared: “No peer of the realm except a peer of Ireland hath any right to give
his vote in the election of any Member to serve in Parliament.” Perhaps surprisingly the ban does not apply
to Lords Bishops. As was recently
explained by the Bishop of Chester, “We
are here only in a spiritual capacity.
That is why we retire.”
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Mary died in 1694 and by 1701, King
William was gravely ill, having been thrown from his horse when it tripped over
a molehill. He would be succeeded by
his half sister Anne, but if she had no surviving children (as was the case)
the Act of Settlement of 1701 ensured that the throne would pass to “the most
excellent princess Sophia, electress and grand duchess dowager of Hanover”,
grand-daughter of James I, or to the heirs of her body being Protestants”. Parliament passed over 50 legitimate
Catholic claimants to the throne, including James II before arriving at Sophia. Unfortunately for Sophia, she died before
inheriting the crown and it was left to her son George Ludwig to take over from
Anne.
In
other words, the Act excluded the exiled James and his descendants and ensured
those Protestant princes, the Hanoverian Georges and their descendants would inherit
the throne. An oath of abjuration was
introduced requiring members to renounce the claim of the Stuarts to the
throne. The title and succession to the
throne is set out in the Act of Settlement.
Also the Act made judges irremovable except by an Address by both Houses
of Parliament. This latter point is
very important. Clearly Parliament had
not forgotten how James II had interfered with the judiciary in order to get a
favourable decision on the prosecution of the Catholic army officer. It did not want a repeat of this by another
Monarch.
Our constitution evolved
so as to embed the power of the executive within the power of the legislature,
and to balance what results with the independent power of the judiciary. If the judiciary acts to restrain the power
of the executive in some way, it is always open to Parliament, in which the
political party of the executive will normally have a majority, to overturn the
relevant law. Theoretically, it is open
to Parliament to repeal all or part of the Act of Settlement on which the
independence of the judiciary formally rests.
The balance of power had three parts, dependent on each other, yet
separate.
The Act restricted the
sovereign from leaving England without parliamentary permission. Once again we see the memory of Parliament
being exercised. This time they
remembered James II escaping to France and going outside the jurisdiction of
the United Kingdom. They wanted Kings
to be held to account.
Old
and Young pretenders subsequently tried to undo their defeat by rebellion but
failed. The Two Pretenders were James
Edward Stuart, known as the Old Pretender, and his son Charles Edward Stuart,
the Young Pretender. Both were Catholics and were determined to take their
place - in their opinion, their rightful place - as King of England
Both Pretenders, in their own way,
were something of a disaster. Both relied on their undoubted popularity with
the Scots, but were sadly lacking when it came to organisation or common sense!
The Old Pretender James Edward, was the son of James II of England and his
second wife Mary of Modena.
Because the first Hanoverian kings spoke little
English, parliament began to be a more powerful force in government, but for
the people:
The
eighteenth century was not a period of gradual progress towards democracy in
Britain, as Whig historians have tried to suggest, but of a determined retreat
from it. The poor, or “the mob or mere
dregs of the people” as Henry Fox, father of Charles James, once called them,
were seen not only as wholly unfit to rule, being ignorant and lacking the
independence which property supposedly conferred, but even as a threat to the
freedom for which England was internationally renowned. "Democracy" by A. Arblaster
The arrogance of the middle classes can be summed up
in the words of John Wesley:
“The
greater share the people have in government the less liberty, civil or religious,
does a nation enjoy”.
John
Wesley was an evangelist and founder of Methodism.
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Corruption in Parliament
was rife at this time and a case came before Parliament in 1703 that highlights
prevalent electoral practices. It seems
to have been the tactics of those persons whose party held a majority in the
House, to decide all disputed elections so as to strengthen their own
side. “The majority”, meaning the government, legislated thus partially,
conveniently ignoring the energetic protests against such flagrant
injustice. They condoned direct bribery
and downright perjury, according to the allegations of the minority; who it is
said, when the turn of the wheel came which raised them to power, invariably
endorsed the policy of their predecessors by repeating the same evil practices. The investigation brought to light the
illegitimate nature of election returns, proving that it had long been the
habit of constables and similar officials to secure for such candidates as
would pay them sufficiently, their return to parliament by obtaining a majority
of votes for the person who purchased their connivance. Thus, after the seat was, in advance, put up
to the highest bidder, pains were taken to ascertain in whose favour each vote
was likely to be given; those burgesses who were not to be cajoled or bribed
into voting for the candidate adopted by the constables were prevented from
voting otherwise, under various pretexts by which they were disabled or
disenfranchised. The oppression reduced
representative government to a mere pretence.
Furious arguments took place between the House of Commons, the House of
Lords and the judges in the case.
Eventually a copy of the case was sent to all the Sheriffs of England
serving as a caution for the future.
Power
corrupts, so corruption is endemic in any political system. The key in a mature democracy is to keep it
under control. In young democracies or
in countries moving towards democracy there is always a tendency towards
corruption. More recently, look at what
has happened in Iraq. The fewer number
of electors the greater the temptation to attempt corruption. In 1703 many seats in Parliament had fewer
than four hundred electors. The
temptation to corrupt was overwhelming.
The representation of the
people in Parliament had long become an illusion. The knights of the shires were the nominees
of nobles and great wealthy landowners; the Crown returned the borough members,
by noble patrons or close corporations; even the representation of cities, with
greater pretensions to independence, was controlled by bribery. The Crown’s bribes were often given out of
Treasury money. Even the King was not
averse to using bribery to get his own way. Nor were rulers content with their
control of the representation, but, after the Restoration, the infamous system
of bribing the members themselves became a recognised instrument of
administration. The country gentlemen
were not less attached to the principles of rational liberty than their
fathers, and would have resisted further encroachments of prerogatives; but
they were satisfied with the Revolution settlement and the remedial laws of
William III, and no new issue had yet arisen to awaken opposition. Accordingly,
they ranged themselves with one or other of the political parties into which
parliament was now beginning to be divided, and bore their part in the more
measured strifes of the 18th century.
From the Revolution, till the reign of George III. the effective power
of the state was wielded by the Crown and the territorial aristocracy; but the
influence of public opinion since the stirring events of the 17th century had
greatly increased. Both parties were
constrained to defer to it; and, notwithstanding the flagrant defects in the
representation, parliament generally kept itself in accord with the general
sentiments of the country.
The political Parties
were generally loose arrangements. They
had not yet acquired the discipline or organisation of the modern Party.
The Church did not wield
power as such, but religion was highly influential. Parliament was painfully aware of the likely
results if it was not synchronised with the rest of the country. Public opinion no longer consisted of those
at court and those with the power to muster troops, but with the wider public.
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The main item on the
agenda during Queen Anne’s reign was Union with Scotland. Union could only happen if a treaty could be
agreed by both the English and Scottish governments. Each government sent
commissioners who worked in separate groups, communicating by writing only.
Right up to the event it
was by no means certain that negotiations for Union would be successful. Conscious of developing authority, the
Scottish Parliament had passed a number of measures designed to assert its
independence. In particular an Act of
Security, to which Royal assent was reluctantly given in 1704, had provided
that on the death of Queen Anne the Scottish succession would be different from
the Hanoverian succession already determined in England and Wales by the Act of
Settlement of 1701. The danger of the
Act of Security was that there was nothing to stop the Old Pretender, James VII
of Scotland from converting to Protestantism, claiming the throne and then when
he had it converting back to Catholicism.
We would then be faced with the old problem. Not surprisingly English retaliation was
quick in forthcoming. It took the form
of the Alien Act of 1705, directed against the status of Scots in England and
trade between the two countries; its provisions were to come into force unless
Scotland accepted the Hanoverian succession before the end of the year.
As was intended, this
measure put pressure on the Scottish Parliament either to stand by a different
succession, which would mean reversion to complete separation, or to move
towards Union. In the event new Commissioners
were appointed and speedily agreed on the terms of the Union, which at English
insistence was to be complete.
Notwithstanding considerable opposition in Scotland, the Scottish
Parliament concluded that Union was the most sensible solution to the relationship
between the two kingdoms. It passed the Act of Union by 110 votes to 69. The terms were then approved without
amendment by the Westminster Parliament.
When the Treaty was drawn
up, it began its progress first through the Scottish Parliament, beginning
October 1706, ratified January 1707 and then through the English Parliament
(ratified March 1707).
The Treaty of Union
declares that England and Scotland shall become one kingdom, with the same
monarchy and succession, and equal trade and economic rights. Some clauses
permit the continuation of Scottish institutions (such as the burgh and legal
systems). Other institutions, such as the Great Seal (used to signify state
approval) were remade in a new ‘British’ version. However, most clauses stated
that Union was to be obtained by Scotland adopting the existing English form:
customs and excise duties, weights and measures and coinage. The English
representation in the House of Commons and the House of Lords remained
unchanged; Scotland was permitted to send sixteen peers to the Lords and
forty-five MPs (burgh and shire commissioners) to the Commons.
The Scottish Parliament
was abolished. The 1707 Union gave
Scotland only 45 seats in the new 558-seat British Parliament. This was less than a strict allocation based
on population. The amount of representation for Scotland had proved a difficult
problem to solve. Based on population
Scotland would have had eighty-five MPs.
Based on wealth it would have had thirteen. Eventually a compromise was reached at
forty-five. This was a undemocratic
outcome for it meant that a vote in Scotland had less value than a vote in
England, but wealth was still a factor in English democracy.
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For the rest of the eighteenth century
Scottish Parliamentary representation was controlled by Scotland’s major
landholding magnates and bore little relevance to Scottish society, rather like
the rest of the kingdom.
Of the 45 seats the 33
Scottish counties elected 30, while 15 were elected from the Scottish
burghs. As in Wales, burghs were banded
together to return one member collectively, save in Edinburgh which in
recognition of its position as capital was granted a member all to itself. The 15 Scottish burghs consisted of the city
of Edinburgh, where the 33 members of the city corporation elected a member,
and 14 groups of four or five smaller burghs, each group electing one member
between them. The corporations of each
of the burghs making up the group held the franchise in the groups of
burghs. Each burgh corporation would
chose a delegate and the delegates would then meet to elect the member. The
representation tended to rotate among the burghs in each group. Since most of the burghs were little more
than villages, the leading county families could usually bribe the corporation
members to get their nominees elected.
Twenty-seven counties
elected one member each (this included Orkney and Shetland, which were strictly
speaking not counties but fiefs of the Crown, but were treated as if they were
a county). The six smallest counties
were grouped together into three groups of two, with one of each pair electing
a member at alternate elections.
The Scottish county
franchise was even more restrictive than for the English counties. A voter either had to own land worth the
equivalent of two pounds sterling "of old extent"- meaning that the
land had to have had that value since the creation of the Scottish Parliament
in the 14th century - or to hold as a Crown tenant land to the value
of 35 pounds sterling. This restricted
the franchise to a handful of wealthy landowners, and in most counties there
were fewer than 100 voters. In some it
was far fewer: in Sutherlandshire the Duke of Sutherland owned almost the
entire county, and all the voters were his tenants, while in Orkney and
Shetland there were seven voters in 1759.
The total Scottish county electorate was fewer than 3,000 in 1800.
This under–representation
gradually reduced in the 18th century and was further diminished
after the Union with Ireland in 1801. By creating a Parliament for Great Britain it
determined the territorial boundaries within which the constitution
operates. The first Parliament of Great
Britain met on 23 October 1707.
England, Scotland and Wales now had one parliament.
The
Union with Scotland, which came into effect on 1st May 1707, added
sixteen representative Scottish peers to the House of Lords. This was not enough to give a seat to all
the Scottish peers so the Scottish peers at each General Election elected
sixteen representative peers from their number. The votes for each peer could be obtained
for as little as £50 each. They were added to the 187 English peers in the
House of Lords. In 2007 a similar
situation arose regarding the hereditary peers that were left in the House of
Lords. When one died the Party to which
he belonged conducted an election of those hereditary peers not in the House of
Lords to choose his successor.
The electoral system,
which had operated in the Scottish Parliament since its creation, was preserved
for the election of Scotland's representatives at Westminster.
The issue of a separate
Scottish Parliament has never been completely put to bed. Today the Scottish National Party wants
independence for Scotland and there is some support for the United Kingdom to
have a federal structure. The
implications for representative democracy are huge. The argument is not yet over.
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Also 1707 was the last
time a royal veto was put on a bill passed by both Houses of Parliament. The bill was the Scottish Militia Bill and
the sovereign was Queen Anne.
Queen Anne withheld the
Royal Assent from the Scottish Militia Bill when it became apparent that James
– the Old Pretender - was planning with Louis XIV of France to invade Scotland
from Calais in an attempt to establish a Jacobite sovereign. Were such an invasion to be successful, the
Queen feared a Scottish militia might be turned against the monarchy. Thus, parliament’s will was denied in the
interests of the sovereignty of the nation and the security of the realm.
This is an important
moment in history. It was the last time
the Monarch overturned the will of Parliament.
From hereon they bowed to parliamentary sovereignty. In similar circumstances could the veto be
used again? Not without causing a
constitutional crisis. Occasionally
there have been calls for it to be used, most recently over the United
Kingdom’s membership of the European Union, but without success.
The Sovereign can create
peers on the advice of the Prime Minister for various reasons, one of which is
to resolve a deadlock between the Upper and Lower chambers. The use of the prerogative for this purpose
was of primary constitutional importance.
Although it was only actually employed in this way in 1711, when Queen
Anne created 12 Tory peers to pass the Treaty of Utrecht, the threat of its use
in 1832 and 1911 was sufficient to cause the Lords to give way.
The
Property Qualifications Act, 1711 restricted membership of the House of Commons
to those possessing land worth £600 per annum for county seats and £300 for
borough seats. Wealth determined who
could vote as well as who could be voted into the House of Commons. Democracy was not well served.
In 1715 James, the Old
Pretender again attempted to supplant King George I on the throne with the aid
of the French. This Jacobite Rebellion
failed miserably which perhaps is not surprising, as the Old Pretender didn't
arrive in England until it was all over! He retired once more to France where he died
in 1766.
In the period 1691 to
1715 the total electorate was about 340,000.
This gives a total of 1 in 4 adult males. Those voting in this period were between
200,000 and 250,000. In each typical
two-member constituency each voter had two votes. Although there were geographical anomalies
the population was more fairly represented than later in the century. Seats were hotly contested. In spite of the Triennial Act of 1694 which
ensured there were contests on average every two years only 30 seats had no
contests between 1691 and 1715. There
was clearly vigorous competition for seats in Parliament – a healthy sign. The total population at this time was about
six million. Unfortunately prior to
1832 the size of the electorate, numbers voting and size of population are all
guesswork, for there is little detailed work on which to base the figures.
The Septennial Act was
passed in 1716. By extending the length
of Parliaments from 3 to 7 years, this Act gave stability to the 18th
Century political system, but tended to increase electoral corruption. The Act remained in force till 1911. The Whigs were only just prevented by
divisions within their own ranks, from passing a Peerage Bill which would have
limited the size of the peerage and dispossessed the Crown of the power to
increase it and so manipulate the House of Lords. The Whigs were still smarting from the
action of Queen Anne to pass the Treaty of Utrecht. It is a pity they did not succeed. Today, treaties are signed by the Prime
Minister using the Royal prerogative without the consent of Parliament – a
clear abuse of democracy.
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Gradually beginning to
re-emerge at this time was the concept of political leafleting. It is only worthwhile if it influences a lot
of the public, which then can change the behaviour of their leaders. As the leaders became more responsive to
public opinion, the power of leafleting increased.
In
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Kings and government thought that
those who dissented in religion were disloyal to the Throne. So Dissenters were punished and made to
suffer for their religion. In 1718 and
1719, Parliament, although dominated entirely by Anglicans, passed Acts to
allow Dissenters to stand for election to town Councils and to send their
children to dissenting schools. Finally
in 1728 Walpole persuaded Parliament to pass the first Annual Indemnity Act
which cancelled the political restrictions on Dissenters, they could now sit in
Parliament. This was an important step
on the road to democracy, but Catholics still had to wait for another century
before discrimination against them diminished.
In
March 1721, when the last of the succession of triennial parliaments dissolved,
the country was already in a state of fermentation at the prospect of the
coming general election contest.
Violence was now utilised in new methods, such as beating off voters of
opposition candidates; while hostile electors were surrounded by mobs hired for
the purpose, and cut off from the polling booths; and in some cases voters were
carried off forcibly; and locked up until the election was over.
Early in the eighteenth
century the career of Sir Robert Walpole began to develop. Angered by his
political attacks, the Tories sought to ruin and discredit him along with the
Duke of Marlborough. In 1712 they alleged
that he had been guilty of corruption as Secretary at War. These charges, however, stemmed from
political hatred rather than fact. Walpole was impeached by the House of
Commons and found guilty by the overwhelmingly Tory House of Lords; he was then
imprisoned in the Tower of London for six months and expelled from
Parliament. The move, however,
backfired against the Tories, as Walpole was perceived by the public as the
victim of an unjust trial. His own
constituency even re-elected him in 1713, despite his earlier expulsion from
the House of Commons. Marlborough went
abroad but with the accession of George I in 1714 he was restored to his
honours.
In 1721 Walpole
effectively became the first Prime Minister – a term Walpole denied - although
still called The First Lord of the Treasury.
The term – Prime Minister - did not come into use until nearly two
hundred years later in 1905 when it was officially recognised.
The German speaking
George I (reigned 1714 to 1727) ceased to attend Cabinet meetings and one of
the members had to preside. George’s
ignorance of the English language and customs became the cornerstone of his
style of rule: leave England to its own devices. Walpole took advantage of George’s absence
and imposed collective responsibility on the Cabinet. Publicly all Ministers had to agree with the
Prime Minister on major points of policy.
He would have no Ministers who would not work, not merely with him but
under him. He was now, for all intents
and purposes the “first among equals.”
What is happening to the
Constitution is key to the development of democracy. Within a period of thirty years new kings
have been effectively appointed by Parliament.
The nation has taken all this in its stride. A foreign monarch – George hardly speaks
English and not the brightest by all accounts, can either leave Parliament to
get on with government or go into battle with it, but decides to leave
Parliament to its own devices and as a result the position of Prime Minister is
created. Fortune favours Parliament and
out of this a strong robust political culture emerges where laws are made by
Parliament and monarchs are no longer vehicles for constitutional
destruction. This was not inevitable
for as we have seen democracy ebbs and flows but gradually we are moving
forward and the political culture is becoming entrenched.
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Walpole changed the
system of government by using patronage. He extended the power of the Cabinet,
and made the Commons the centre of parliamentary power. He set up a ruthless party political machine. He excluded peers who voted against the
government and exerted strict control over his administration. Walpole became so dominant that in 1741 the
peers framed a protest against the development of his office. Even so, he did
not perform the functions or enjoy the position of a modern Prime
Minister. Only in being First Lord of
the Treasury and in living in 10 Downing Street did he resemble a modern
Premier. When he fell from office in
1742, his colleagues did not resign with him.
The name Prime Minister was not recognised for a long time and Walpole
himself repudiated the title; yet he was as much a Prime Minister as any man
who ruled after him.
Walpole manipulated huge
sums thinly disguised as “Secret Service
Money”. But he was never wealthy enough to purchase all. His successors,
who finally drove him from office, bought elections on a more extended
scale. This was public money and today
would be the cause for great scandal, but as has been pointed out, this was before
bribery and corruption were endemic in fledgling democracies. Peers received pensions from the Crown so
they could be kept in check if they wished for honours for their
dependants. It was a big incentive not
to vote against the Court. Similarly
Bishops depended on the Court for the most lucrative positions and for their
advancement, as did most of the clergy.
The position has not changed today.
Bishops and Archbishops are still appointed by the Prime Minister on the
grounds that the Church of England is the Established Church. In a democracy there should be no religious
interference or influence either way.
At this time the King had
the right to appoint and dismiss Ministers, although he had to make sure that
those he appointed had the support of the House of Commons. He also had the right to lay down government
policy, but he had to get Parliament to agree with his policies. On his elevation to Earl of Orford, Walpole
was presented with 10 Downing Street, which became the home of all future Prime
Ministers.
The House of Commons
consisted of 558 MPs. About 100 were
sons or relations of members of the House of Lords and would vote as their
lordly relatives told them to. About 60
were in the Army or Navy, using their vote in the Commons to persuade a
Minister to give them promotion.
Walpole had said “Every man has
his price” and the King’s Ministers were usually able to pay that price.
The membership of the
House of Commons, especially that part representing the boroughs, could also be
influenced. Individual Members often
aspired to honourable or lucrative employment under the Crown; they might
receive pensions for themselves or their dependants; or they might owe their
seats to the influence, direct or indirect, of the Court. The narrow franchise of many of the Parliamentary
boroughs and the fossilization of Parliamentary representation after the
Revolution made it possible for money and influence virtually to determine many
of the elections. As early as 1688,
five peers between them controlled forty-four seats in the House of Commons
absolutely, and the cultivation of borough influence was an object which
members of the peerage pursued intensively in the decades that followed. In many cases the local seat was simply
filled by the heir or a relative of the local grandee. Apart from this indirect influence through
the peerage, the patronage and employment at the disposal of the Crown could
often influence decisive numbers of voters directly. There were constituencies in which
government employees (as revenue, customs, and excise men) were actually in the
majority. J.E. Powell & A. Maude - "Biography of a Nation".
We also saw at this time an increase in the number of
newspapers in circulation and the beginning of parliamentary reporting. The connection between debates in
Parliament, opinion forming and the people was growing.
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With the accession of
George II (reigned 1727 to 1760) to the throne corruption continued. Rotten boroughs were still highly prevalent,
Old Sarum and Dunwich being the worst. In a by-election in 1728 the most famous
rotten borough of all – Old Sarum, near Salisbury, the winning candidate
Colonel Harrison defeated Henry Fox by four votes to one. Old Sarum returned two members of
parliament, so effectively five people chose two Members of Parliament. The effect of centuries of demographic
change without adjustment to the Parliamentary seats was now having a major
impact in terms of representation.
"elections in the eighteenth century
were not contested by organised political parties with a programme or manifesto. Although in the mid-eighteenth century many
politicians could still be roughly categorised as Whig or Tory, even this
distinction was breaking down. The
opposition to the long-running Whig administrations would generally include
dissident Whigs as well as a rump of Tories.
In any case, most Members of Parliament had no wish to pursue a
political career as such and were not elected to pursue any particular policy,
many seeing their duty as one of supporting the King’s chosen Ministers unless
they did something manifestly outrageous.
As a result, politicians did not generally win power by campaigning at a
general election and winning a majority for a specific programme, and nor did
voters necessarily have the composition of the government foremost in their
minds – no general election in the entire eighteenth century led directly to a
change of government. William Pitt the Younger by William Hague.
When “boroughmongering”
was a profession – a very highly paid one – and boroughs were farmed for sale
it might be expected that the buying and selling of “seats” in parliament was like any item of commerce. Lord Chesterfield, looking around for some
venal borough to bring in a young hopeful, thinking it a finishing part of a
gentleman’s training to be in the House proposed to pay “twenty four hundred pounds for a seat” presumably the price in
Chesterfields younger days; but he found seats had risen to inordinate rates of
up to five thousand pounds, chiefly due to rich factors returned home with
fortunes from the East and West Indies.
Chesterfield had been ousted from office for voting against an excise
Bill and became one of Sir Robert Walpole’s bitterest opponents.
In 1745 there was a last attempt by a Catholic to
seize the throne. Bonnie Prince
Charlie, the Young Pretender, conferred with his supporters at Westbrook Place
in Godalming, Surrey. He landed on the West Coast of Scotland in July 1745,
accompanied by nine men and a few weapons! This uprising suffered from three
great problems: bad timing, bad organisation and false hope. Bonnie Prince Charlie had a few successes
but did not do enough preparation.
Nevertheless, he continued to march south. In September he was in Manchester and in an
effort to get English recruits to his cause, a drummer boy and a whore were
sent to drum-up recruits but they failed!
Only 200 men joined his forces.
Charles had to retreat back to Scotland and was finally routed at the
battle of Culloden by the Duke of Cumberland third son of George II and known
as “the butcher”, in 1746.
Charles escaped from the battlefield and lurked for
six months in the Western Isles under the care of loyal followers like Flora
MacDonald and the Kennedy brothers.
Flora escorted the Prince, disguised as her maid “Betty Burke”, to safety where they sheltered, and then went ' over the sea to Skye'. In 1746 Prince Charlie left for France in a
French frigate and ended his life, a querulous drunk, in Rome, in 1788. Thus
ended the Stuart dream of a Catholic sitting once more, upon the English
throne. The death of Cardinal York in
1807 was the last gasp of Stuart unrest.
There
was an attempt made in 1753 to allow Jews to become naturalised as British
citizens. This became known as “The Jew Bill”. It was passed by the House of Lords, but
fell in the Commons where the Tories made a great outcry against this “abandonment of Christianity”. Religious discrimination was alive and well.
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Between the years 1603 to 1760 from the reign of
James I to that of George II, 18 life peerages were created for women but the
women, were not allowed to sit in the House of Lords. This was an interesting phenomena,
resurrecting the old idea of the peerage, which was as life peers rather than
hereditary, but as the women were not allowed to sit in the House of Lords it
failed to set any precedent for the men.
On the accession of George III, (reigned 1760 to
1820) the king consented to make such a disposition of his interest in the
hereditary revenues of the crown in England, as Parliament might think
fit. Hitherto the crown had enjoyed
certain revenues which were calculated by Parliament to produce a sufficient
income; but now the king agreed to accept a fixed amount as his civil list, 'for the support of his household, and the
honour and dignity of the crown.'
This was the first time that the direct control of Parliament over the
personal expenditure of the king had been acknowledged; and it is not a little
curious that so important a change in the relations of the sovereign to
Parliament, should have been introduced at the very period when he was seeking
to extend his prerogatives, and render himself independent of other influences
in the state. It soon appeared,
however, from the debts incurred, that His Majesty was not inclined to permit
this concession to diminish the influence of the crown.
The money arising out of the hereditary revenues,
secured by various acts of Parliament to the king's predecessors, was now
carried to the 'aggregate fund,' out of which the annual sum of £723,000 was
granted to His Majesty
In 1763 John Wilkes, known for his outrageous
behaviour and now a Member of Parliament was arrested on a general warrant
(that is, one not specifically describing the place to be searched or the
persons or things to be seized) because he had attacked a speech of the King
calling him a liar. His award of £1,000
damages against the Home Secretary for wrongful arrest demonstrated that
Government officials were not shielded from the ordinary law of the land. The Lord Chief Justice Pratt discharged
Wilkes arguing that as an MP he should be free to criticise the
government. This was a major step in
the battle for the liberty of the people.
The King and his First Minister persuaded MPs that “The North Briton”, which Wilkes had
written in was a piece of seditious libel.
Wilkes fled to Paris. In his
absence Parliament voted to expel him from membership of the House of Commons.
In 1767-68 nominations for the Honiton, Melbourne
Port and Reading constituencies were advertised for sale in newspapers. However the arrangement did not always work
smoothly. One MP who bought his
constituency, Antony Henly was furious when constituents tried to get him to
represent them in Parliament, “Gentlemen,
yours I received and am very much surprised at your insolence in troubling me
about the Excise. You know what I know
very well; that I bought you. I know
what perhaps you think I don’t know, that you are about selling yourselves to
somebody else; and I know what you perhaps don’t know, that I am buying another
borough. And now may the curse of God
light upon you all; and may your Houses be as common to Excise-men, as your
wives and daughters were to me, when I stood for the Corporation.”
By 1769 and the reign of George III there was a great
debate about the power of parliament.
Lord Bacon said “there is nothing
that a parliament cannot do” and he had reason. A parliament can revive or abrogate old
laws, and make new ones; settle the succession to the crown; impose taxes;
establish forms of religion; naturalise foreigners; dissolve marriages; legitimate
bastards; attaint a man of treason, etc.
Lord Bolingbroke was of a different opinion, and affirmed that there is
something that a parliament cannot do: it cannot annul the constitution; and
that if it should attempt to annul the constitution, the whole body of the
people would have a right to resist it.
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Also in 1769 there occurred an
election for the seat of Middlesex. John Wilkes had
returned to England in 1768 and stood as Radical candidate for Middlesex. After
being elected Wilkes was arrested and taken to King’s Bench Prison. For the next fortnight a large crowd
assembled at St. George's Field, a large open space by the prison. On 10th May 1768 a crowd of around 15,000
arrived outside the prison. The crowd
chanted 'Wilkes and Liberty', 'No
Liberty, No King', and 'Damn the King! Damn the Government! Damn the Justices!’ Fearing that the crowd would attempt to
rescue Wilkes, the troops opened fire killing seven people. Anger at the massacre of St George’s Fields
led to disturbances all over London.
On 8th June Wilkes was found guilty of libel and sentenced to 22 months imprisonment and fined £1,000. Wilkes was also expelled from the House of Commons. But in February, March and April 1769 Wilkes was three times re-elected for the seat of Middlesex. The result was that Wilkes was returned as the head of the poll whilst his opponent, a member of the Tory party (with a quarter of his votes) was declared duly elected. Wilkes was repeatedly expelled by a privilege-conscious Commons, remaining excluded until 1774.
On 8th June Wilkes was found guilty of libel and sentenced to 22 months imprisonment and fined £1,000. Wilkes was also expelled from the House of Commons. But in February, March and April 1769 Wilkes was three times re-elected for the seat of Middlesex. The result was that Wilkes was returned as the head of the poll whilst his opponent, a member of the Tory party (with a quarter of his votes) was declared duly elected. Wilkes was repeatedly expelled by a privilege-conscious Commons, remaining excluded until 1774.
Wilkes
understood that “if incapacity can be
declared on an ad hoc basis by the House of Commons alone… it is possible for
the House to choose itself.” This
raises an interesting point. Should the
House of Commons be able to exclude a Member when the people have elected that
Member? If the people elect someone
then it is only the people that should have the ability to dismiss them. The correct procedure in a democracy would
be for there to be a by-election called so that the member would have to
justify their position. If the
electorate voted the member back, then that would be the end of the dispute.
The Middlesex election set off a series of petitions
and remonstrance’s. On July 5th
1769 the Livery of London presented a petition to the king. It stated:
“Your
Ministers, from corrupt principles and in violation of every duty, have,
insulted and defeated the law on different occasions, and by different
contrivances, both at home and abroad, they have at length completed their
design, by violently wrestling from the people the last sacred right we had
left, the right of election, by the unprecedented seating of a candidate
notoriously set up and chosen only by themselves. They have thereby taken from your subjects
all hopes of parliamentary redress, and have left us no resource, under God,
but in your Majesty.
All this they have been able to effect by corruption; by a
scandalous misapplication and embezzlement of the public treasure; and a
shameful prostitution of public honours and employment; procuring deficiencies
of the civil lists to be made good without examinations; and instead of
punishing, conferring honours on a paymaster, the public defaulter of
unaccounted millions.
From an unfeigned sense of duty we owe to your Majesty, and
to our country, we have ventured thus humbly to lay before the throne these
great and important truths, which it has been the business of your Ministers to
conceal. We most earnestly beseech your
Majesty to grant us redress. It is for
the purpose of redress alone, and for such occasions as the present, that those
great and extensive powers are entrusted to the Crown by the wisdom of that
Constitution which your Majesty’s illustrious family was chosen to defend, and
which we trust in God it will for ever continue to support.”
However
meritorious the cause, it was an offence to a king whose mind, never remarkable
for lucidity and which deteriorated as he got older, was then under “the influence of the worst of counsellors”,
as stated in the first prayer of the petition.
The document, after much delay was at last presented to the king; but
the king made no reply, but, handing the petition to the lord-in-waiting,
turned his back on the presenters, who represented the integrity and commercial
greatness of the City of London and were its elected guardians, and addressed
Baron Dieden, the Danish ambassador, who was standing in his vicinity, on an
indifferent topic.
In
March of the year following, after awaiting a response for nearly twelve months
the City resolved to draw up a further and more stringent remonstrance. In this remonstrance the wrongs of the
people were eloquently urged: “Representatives of the people are essential
to the making of laws, and there is a time when it is morally demonstrable that
men cease to be representatives. That
time is now arrived. The present House
of Commons do not represent the people.
The forms of the Constitution, like those of Religion were not
established for form’s sake, but for the substance.”
The
Corporation of the City, in sixty carriages, proceeded to the palace of St.
James’s, and was received by the King on his throne. The King, with a great power of
dissimulation, said “I have always been
careful, as well to execute faithfully the trust reposed in me, as to avoid
even the appearance of invading any of those powers which the constitution has
placed in other hands”. After
reading his equivocative answer His Majesty instantly turned round to his
courtiers, and burst out laughing.
Petitions and
remonstrances went back and forth to the king with no side giving way. However the blow struck at a corrupt
administration by the remonstrance’s seems to have dampened the ardour of
ministers; in any case, no Court candidate was put forward for Westminster in
1770, and consequently the election of a liberal candidate was unopposed. On the 19th May the King
prorogued parliament
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The corruption of the
electorate was commonplace at this time and came to a head in the “Spendthrift Election” in 1768 when three
Earls fought the election in favour of their respective nominees. The opponents were the Earls of Halifax,
Northampton and Spencer. The candidates
were of small account in the conflict; their patrons bore the brunt of the battle. The canvassing commenced long before the
polling; this was extended over fourteen days – a phenomenal circumstance in
the days when elections were often settled and returns made before ten o’clock
on the morning of polling day.
According to the poll book, the legitimate number of electors, some 930,
was exceeded by 288, but confusion of persons was accounted for by the
promiscuous hospitalities of three noble mansions being at the mercies of the
crowd for weeks: at the famous historical seats of Horton, Castle Ashby, and
Althorp. The “controverted” election came before the House of Commons. The results were no less eccentric: the
number of votes being finally found equal, the election was referred to chance,
and decided by a toss, which Lord Spencer won, and nominated a man out of
India. The cost of this escapade then
had to be counted. It is said Lord
Spencer expended one hundred thousand pounds; the equivalent of five million
pounds today, and his antagonists are credited with having wasted one hundred
and fifty thousand pounds each – incredible sums. Earl Spencer came off lightest; Lord Halifax
was ruined; Lord Northampton cut down his trees, sold his furniture and went
abroad for the rest of his days, and died in Switzerland.
Largely through the
efforts of John Wilkes, the Commons permitted from 1771 the reporting of
parliamentary debates a step vital to democratic government.
The House of
Commons jealously maintained secret discussion of parliamentary affairs for
many centuries of its history. The
record of things done was available in the printed Votes and Proceedings of the House and in the Journal, but the publication of things said was punishable as a
breach of the privileges of the House.
The first breaches in the tradition of secrecy were made in the 17th century, when propaganda for the parliamentary cause in the civil war led the House to ignore occasional unofficial printing of speeches in Parliament. By the middle of the 18th century there was increasing demand for reports of parliamentary debates and thinly disguised accounts of what Sir R-b-t W-lp-l (Sir Robert Walpole) said were being printed in the new monthly magazines.
The first breaches in the tradition of secrecy were made in the 17th century, when propaganda for the parliamentary cause in the civil war led the House to ignore occasional unofficial printing of speeches in Parliament. By the middle of the 18th century there was increasing demand for reports of parliamentary debates and thinly disguised accounts of what Sir R-b-t W-lp-l (Sir Robert Walpole) said were being printed in the new monthly magazines.
Editors and
printers were summoned and fined, but the reports continued as debates of
fictitious political clubs, such as the
Proceedings of the Lower Room of the Robin Hood Society. One of the most famous was the Report of
the Senate of Lilliputia, which
appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine,
edited for some years by writer, critic, lexicographer and conversationalist,
Samuel Johnson. Direct suppression
ceased after 1771, following the legal battle in which John Wilkes played a part,
campaigning for freedom of speech.
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On release from prison in
April 1770, still banned from the House of Commons, Wilkes joined the campaign
for the freedom of the press. In
February 1771, the House of Commons attempted to prevent several London newspapers
from publishing reports of its debates.
Wilkes decided to challenge this decision and the government reacted by
ordering the arrest of two of his printers.
A large crowd soon surrounded the House of Commons and afraid of what
would happen, the government ordered the release of the two men and abandoned
attempts to prevent the publication of reports of its debates. This was a great breakthrough for
democracy. Information is power.
In 1774 John Wilkes was
elected Lord Mayor of London. He was also
elected to represent Middlesex in the House of Commons. Wilkes campaigned for religious toleration
and on 21st March 1776 he introduced a motion for parliamentary
reform. He called for the
redistribution of seats from the small corrupt boroughs to the fast growing
industrial areas such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield. Although not a supporter of universal
suffrage, Wilkes argued that working men should have a share in the power to
make laws. This was a discussion, which
took sixty years before starting to be solved.
Wilkes moved in Parliament for a “just
and equal representation of the people in Parliament” and demands were made
to limit bribery and corrupt practices at elections.
In this famous speech Wilkes set out to show how the
House of Commons was the representation of the many by the few. He stated that 1741 was the time when the
highest number of MPs took part in a division.
The vote went 253 to 242. Taking
254 as the highest possible number of MPs to form a majority he showed that
this number of MPs were actually elected by no fewer than 5,723 persons. He went on:
When we
consider, sir, that the most important powers of this House, the levying of
taxes on, and enacting laws for five million of persons, is thus usurped and
unconstitutionally exercised by the small number I have mentioned, it becomes
our duty to the people to restore to them their clear rights, their original
share in the legislature. The ancient
representation of this kingdom, we find was founded by our ancestors in
justice, wisdom and equality. The
present state of it would be continued by us in folly, obstinacy, and
injustice.
One of the great parliamentarians in 1774 raised an
issue, which is still debated today. In
a “Speech to the electors of Bristol”
Edmund Burke MP said “Your representative
owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement, and he betrays it instead
of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. You choose a member indeed, but when you
choose him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a Member of Parliament.” Is this really representative democracy or
does it give a Member of Parliament carte
blanche to do whatever he wishes regardless of the views of his electorate? Burke was opposed to natural rights but he did believe in a social contract elevating it to a divine sanction.
It was at this time that Prime Minister North brought
in an important change to our constitutional arrangements, which has lasted
through the centuries. The doctrine of
collective Cabinet responsibility was established. It arose from a case in 1778-9 when the
Commons tried first of all to censure the Secretary of State and then the first
Lord of the Admiralty for their actions regarding the setbacks in America. North accepted responsibility himself and
included the whole Cabinet.
“He himself was equally criminal…So
was every other efficient member of the cabinet…It was a crime in common, or no
crime.” Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England to 1803.
The
doctrine soon took effect. It was now no
longer possible for Parliament to censure an individual minister because it
disliked his policies. This was an
important step towards Cabinet Government.
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The Commons began to exercise more authority in
controlling the Government. Thus in
1780 we have Dunning’s motion, “that the
influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.” The motion was passed by 233 votes to 215,
a significant act of defiance and a marker against King George and his exercise
of patronage.
A survey in 1780 revealed that the electorate in
England and Wales consisted of just 214,000 people – less than 3% of the total
population of about 7 million.
Before
1832 there were no comprehensive lists of voters; the electorate was small in
most boroughs, while in the counties most voters could prove their
qualification by producing receipts for payment of land tax (pursuant to an Act
of 1780, the payment of land tax was confirmed as a voting qualification, and
duplicate assessments were deposited with the Clerk of the Peace for the
purpose of electoral registration). The
increased franchise made a list necessary, and the duty of compilation was
given to the overseers of the poor.
Annual lists of eligible voters were to be deposited with the Clerk of
the Peace, who produced printed registers from them. It was the introduction of the Land Tax
which first enables us to start compiling details of the size of the electorate
and thus monitor the progress towards democracy, a consequence which was
probably not foreseen at the time.
At this time the Irish Parliament based in Dublin had
little power because of Poynings Law of 1494-5, which said “no decision by the Irish Parliament could
become law until approved by the Westminster Parliament and every Act passed by
Westminster applied to Ireland.”
Catholics could not vote nor stand as candidates even for the town
council.
In 1782, just before he died in office, the Prime
Minister, Lord Rockingham:
repealed Poyning’s Act,
which had for three long centuries bound the Irish Parliament to the dictates
of the English Privy Council. The
Dublin parliament was made free of the control of Westminster, and started on
its brief career (1782-1800) as an independent body. A History of Britain Section 5 1688-Present day by E. Carter & R.A. Mears.
Henry Gratton led the campaign for an independent
Irish Parliament. His father
disinherited him because of his fervent support for Irish independence. Later he was a strong supporter of Catholic
emancipation. However, through the
corrupt electoral system, the British controlled nearly two thirds of the seats
in the Irish Parliament, while through the system of patronage, the Crown could
“buy” the votes of many Irish MPs.
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As the population of the cities expanded the
discrepancy in the number of electors in city seats was much greater than in
agricultural seats. London had 10 MPs
whereas agricultural Cornwall had 44 MPs.
The small middle class electorate that had the vote was naturally
enthusiastic for parliamentary reform to redistribute the seats to put right
this discrepancy. In other words they
wanted a bigger share of the cake. With
the growing demands the politicians had to respond with proposals for
reform. Unlike today there was no
Boundaries Commission which was in permanent session so any action taken could
only be on an ad hoc basis prompted
by Parliament.
The
politicians of the time who put forward these reforms did not envisage that
they were embarking on a long-term programme of political change. Their intention was to restore balance to
what they regarded as a near perfect constitutional settlement, arrived at in
the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William III and Mary replaced the fleeing
James I. That settlement involved the
ultimate supremacy of Parliament, a guaranteed Protestant succession to the
Crown, and religious tolerance for all Protestants, even though Dissenters were
still barred from political office. "William Pitt The Younger" by William Hague.
Looking back to the 18th century from the
present day the process of elections then looks totally chaotic. The number of Members of Parliament remained
stable over an extensive period of time.
Nearly all constituencies were dual member seats. Today we have an Electoral Commission
(formerly the Boundaries Commission) permanently employed revising constituency
boundaries in an attempt to ensure a broad equality in the number of voters in
a constituency. Nevertheless the
political view at the time was that Parliament should represent all interests
of those with property. It was not the
view that Parliament should be representative of the people. In addition if there was competition among
the aristocracy and the gentry for power and the spoils of office then that was
healthy for the country. Democracy as
we have defined it had still a long way to go.
In 1780 the House of Commons had 558 members, of
which 489 were from England, 45 from Scotland and 24 from Wales. Ireland had no seats as the Irish had a
separate Parliament in Dublin.
Only the English constituencies were of interest to
Pitt as he sought his first election to Parliament. Of these
the generally most prestigious constituencies were the forty counties,
each of which elected two Members. For
two reasons, however, these were of little appeal to a politician who aspired
to high office. First they had a
relatively wide franchise, embracing all males who owned the freehold of land
with a rental value of more than forty shillings a year, and could have
electorates running into many thousands.
A contested election in Yorkshire, for instance, could easily produce
20,000 voters at the poll. As a result
they were extremely expensive to contest (William Wilberforce’s two opponents
in Yorkshire in 1807 reportedly spent over £100,000 each – the equivalent of
more than £5 million today), and the funds had to be found by the candidate, or
a rich patron, or his supporters. Often
huge sums were spent on a “canvass” of county seats to see whether it was worth
putting a particular candidate forward before embarking on the immense expense
and trouble of actually contesting the election.
In the 1780 General Election, only two counties had
contested elections.
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The costs of bribery and corruption probable peaked
at about this time. An anomaly arose
out of the expense of fighting county seats.
In 1707 the MPs agreed that if one of them took an office of profit
under the Crown then he would resign his seat and fight a by-election. Because of the prohibitive expense of
fighting county seats many MPs for county seats were put off taking an office
of profit under the Crown. In today’s
world, where Ministers do not stay in the job for very long, it is perhaps a
pity that this practice has been abandoned.
Certainly it gave more stability to government.
Very
few of the reformers favoured universal manhood suffrage, as when Alderman
William Beckford addressed the Corporation of London in 1761: “Gentlemen, our
constitution is deficient in only one point, and that is that pitiful little
boroughs send members to Parliament equal to great cities; and it is contrary
to the maxim that power should follow property.” "Democracy" by B. Crick
About half the city and borough seats could be
purchased. The going rate for a seat
was £3,000-4,000. Political families
purchased seats, wealthy ex-patriates returning from India purchased seats,
even the King would on occasion purchase a seat. Perhaps though, the most bizarre buyer was
the Treasury itself, which would purchase a seat with taxpayer’s money in order
that a person favoured by the government, would be elected. Corruption was rife. An individual would sometimes “own” as many as ten seats. The political landscape was slowly
changing. By the end of the eighteenth
century wealth was slipping away from the aristocracy to the landowners and
manufacturers. The 203 cities and
boroughs elected 405 members of Parliament.
These
were heavily weighted to the south west of the country and to seaports, and
were still based on the wealth and prominence of towns in mediaeval times. The entitlement to vote in these
constituencies varied hugely sometimes being relatively wide as in the counties
(the City of Westminster itself being an example), sometimes limited to the
owners of certain properties or “burgages”.
It was thus variously possible to control a borough by instructing the
voters, by bribing the corporation, or simply by owning sufficient
burgages. Landowners would commonly
instruct their tenants how to vote, and since the voting itself was openly
recorded this rarely left the voters with much of a choice. In other circumstances voters could sell
themselves to the highest bidder. "William Pitt the Younger" by William Hague
Thomas Pitt wrote in 1740: “There are few {Cornish} boroughs where the `common sort of people do
not think they have as much right to sell themselves and their votes, as they
have to sell their corn and their cattle".
Free meals and
alcohol were the standard fare in election campaigns. George Selwyn, MP for Gloucester complained
in 1761. “Two of my voters were murdered yesterday by an experiment which we call
shopping, that is, locking them up and keeping them dead drunk to the day of
the election. Mr. Snell’s agents forced
two single Selwyns into a post chaise, where being suffocated with the brandy
that was given them and a very fat man that had custody of them, they were
taken out stone dead”
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At the time when Parliament was
discussing the repeal of the “Stamp Act” Hansard
reported an unnamed MP as saying :
“There can be no doubt that the inhabitants
of the colonies are as much represented in parliament as the greatest part of
the people in England are, among nine millions of whom there are eight who have
no voice in electing members of parliament: every objection therefore to the
dependency of the colonies upon parliament, which arises on the ground of
representation, goes to the whole present condition of Great Britain”.
It
was the “Stamp Act” which had triggered off the moves towards the American War
of Independence The act required all legal documents, permits, commercial
contracts, newspapers, wills, pamphlets, and playing cards in the American
colonies to carry a tax stamp:
Thus it was that, on 30
May 1765, with Lees in the lead, the Virginian Assembly passed the first
resolution against the Stamp Act. This
solemnly declared that “the taxation of the people by themselves, or by persons
chosen to represent them… is the distinguishing characteristic of British
freedom, without which the ancient constitution cannot exist”. "Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity" by David Starkey
The American War of Independence was essentially
about representative democracy. The
slogan “No taxation without
representation” was widely used:
for
the British Parliament, which represented only the British people to presume to
legislate for the people of America, who already had their own representatives
in their own assemblies, was a gross usurpation. Instead, only George himself, as king and
ultimate sovereign of America, had a right to intervene. "Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity" by David Starkey
The outcome of the War was the Declaration of Independence drafted by Thomas Jefferson and adopted
on 4th July 1776. It was
revolutionary for the time. The
document was a damning indictment of the British government and monarch. Both were accused of breaches of many issues
included in the Bill of Rights.
Subsequent
generations have focused on the grand principles of the preamble, with its
ringing assertion (written by a slave-owner, of course) that all men, being
born free and equal, have the right to determine how and by whom they are
governed. "Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity" by David Starkey
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Such being the state of the representation in the
United Kingdom, an actual majority of the members of the House of Commons were
returned by an inconsiderable number of persons. According to a statement made by the Duke of
Richmond in 1780, not more than six thousand men returned a clear majority of
the House of Commons. It was alleged in
the petition of the Society of the
Friends of the People, presented by Mr. Grey in 1793, that eighty-four
individuals absolutely returned one hundred and fifty-seven members to
Parliament; that seventy influential men secured the return of one hundred and
fifty members; and that, in this manner, three hundred and seven members, -
being the majority of the House, before the union with Ireland, - were returned
to Parliament by one hundred and fifty-four patrons; of whom forty were peers.
In 1779:
The
franchise in the universities was based on membership of the University Senate,
and was thus possessed only by academics.
These constituencies were also unusual in having a secret ballot. The electorate of Cambridge University was a
little over seven hundred strong in the early 1780s. Monarchy from the Middle Ages to Modernity by David Starkey
The universities are a fascinating study of the
anomalies of the British electoral system.
Taking as an example the two main ones of Oxford and Cambridge, they
elected each two members to the House of Commons, from 1603 when they were
created by Royal Charter, to 1950 when they were abolished.
The constituencies were not physical areas. Their electorate consisted of the graduates
of the Universities. They returned two
Members of Parliament by using what is known as the bloc vote. This system was used until 1918. From then until their abolition in 1950 the
MPs were elected by the Single Transferable Vote method of Proportional
Representation.
The
polls for university constituencies were open for five days
In bloc voting, all candidates ran against each other
for the two positions. Each voter selected up to two candidates on the ballot,
and the two candidates with the most votes won the positions. Voters were unable to vote for the same
candidate more than once.
Single
transferable vote (STV) is a preferential voting system designed to minimise
wasted votes and provide proportional representation while ensuring that votes
are explicitly for candidates rather than party lists. It achieves this by using multi-seat
constituencies and by transferring votes that would otherwise be wasted. STV
initially allocates an individual's vote to their most preferred candidate, and
then subsequently transfers unneeded or unused votes after candidates are
either elected or eliminated, according to the voter's stated preferences. So for a period of British history
constituencies in the United Kingdom used what is probably the fairest voting
system there is. No vote is wasted
under this system. Every vote has a
value.
At every attempt to get Parliament to reform itself,
Edmund Burke expressed his adamant, even hysterical opposition. “Popular
election is a mighty evil” he declared in a debate in 1780 on the need for
more frequent Parliaments.
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As we approach the end of the eighteenth century where do we stand regarding democracy? The rule of law is firmly established, as is Parliament. The power of the monarch has been diminished, with several royal prerogatives now exercised by Parliament. Cabinet government is established.
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As we approach the end of the eighteenth century where do we stand regarding democracy? The rule of law is firmly established, as is Parliament. The power of the monarch has been diminished, with several royal prerogatives now exercised by Parliament. Cabinet government is established.
The electorate is small, corruption is rife,
religious discrimination has been reduced but Catholics are still heavily
discriminated against. The value of
votes varies widely, in spite of a permanent Boundaries commission sitting we
do not have equal sized constituencies even today. There is no secret ballot. Nevertheless, the Bill of Rights was a
fundamental necessity for freedom, liberty and justice. We have moved forward, but there is still a
long way to go.
One
of the tragedies for historians was the loss of so much information about
Parliament, which occurred when the Houses of Parliament were burnt down in
1834 leaving only Westminster Hall standing.
Pre 1832 most studies of Parliament get their information from local sources.
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