ABSTRACT
What struck contemporaries most forcibly about the Second Reform Act was the unexpectedly wide extension of the franchise in the boroughs. As it turned out, the borough electorate in England and Wales grew by 134 per cent between 1866 and 1869, while the number of voters in the counties rose by 46 per cent and the combined total by 89 per cent. The boroughs concentrated the minds of observers at the time, and they have also concentrated the interest of most historians. But they were far from being the whole story, and opinion at the time was also affected by the redistribution of seats and alteration of boundaries which followed Reform, and by the different ways in which the rules were changed in Scotland and Ireland.
