ABSTRACT
The history of the establishment of the Birmingham Caucus which was the starting-point of the movement, has supplied them with an outline of the machinery of the representative Associations. The basis of the organization of the party in the boroughs is the ward or polling-district, where the local adherents of the party assembled in general meetings constitute the electorate of the Organization; from these original electors proceeds the representation of the party. In the large towns the concentration of power in the hands of a few reaches its extreme limit, in spite of the autonomist doctrine of the Caucus, and exhibits in the most striking way its tendency towards oligarchic government. The year 1885 opened a new political era in the "counties." The Reform Act, by lowering the qualification, added nearly two millions of rural voters to the electorate; every occupier of a cottage obtained a vote.
