ABSTRACT
Reactions to the Second Reform Act were influenced above all by the expectations and fears of contemporary commentators about the number and nature of the new voters, especially in the towns. Impressive as it was, the rise in the number of borough voters was less than it might have been. The one-year residential qualification reduced the number of potential voters considerably, although it came to be interpreted in a more relaxed way which allowed householders moving within a borough to retain their vote. Pauperism disqualified many, and was to do so for years to come; and in many towns it proved impossible to abolish compounding, as tenants refused to pay their rates in person and arrears of collection mounted rapidly in the late 1860s. The persistence of compounding, which had to be tolerated because of the sheer scale on which it took place, led to anomalies; in some boroughs compounders were allowed on to the electoral register in 1868, but in others they were excluded. In 1869, Gladstone’s government resolved the issue by quietly enacting that compounders should be allowed to vote on the same basis as those who paid their rates in person. As Seymour remarks, this amounted to the settling without controversy in 1869 of an issue that had generated agonized debate two years previously; it was ‘the removal of the last great restriction upon pure household suffrage’.
