ABSTRACT
The election figures are interesting in view of the difficulty of campaigning in an eminently respectable constituency against candidates who, like Portman and Horne, had wealth, Parliamentary experience, and the prestige of having voted for the Reform Bill. The great bulk of the Whig majority which had carried Reform through the Commons would certainly be returned once more, reinforced no doubt by scores of fresh accessions of Whig country gentlemen, members for new county divisions or older boroughs wrenched from Tory control. Pledges should be sought from candidates, urged the pamphlet, which would bind them to further reform of Parliament and to Law Reform, Financial Reform, Trade Reform, Church Reform, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Abolition of the Taxes on Knowledge. It was a programme less vast than that being called for by the Ultra-Radicals, but one which must have appeared much too all-embracing for immediate practical politics even in the eyes of “movement” Whigs.
