ABSTRACT
Sir John Eardley-Wilmot (1810–1892) was educated at Rugby, Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford. Entering the law, he became a Judge serving in the county court at Bristol from 1854 to 1863 and the Marylebone district in London from 1863 to 1871. He wrote several works on legal and political subjects, including editing his father’s Abridgement of Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1853. Eardley-Wilmot was Conservative MP for South Warwickshire from 1874 to 1885.
Eardley-Wilmot’s A Safe and Constitutional Plan of Parliamentary Reform sought to enlarge the electorate, while maintaining the equilibrium of the constitution and preventing any one class acquiring a preponderant power. Payment of direct taxation, Eardley-Wilmot argued, provided the basis for doing so. He proposed that, in the counties, adult males paying income tax, as well as copyholders of the annual value of 40s, leaseholders paying an annual rent of £10 or more, tenants paying rent of £20 or more per annum, and those paying taxes to the annual amount of 40s, be given the vote. In the boroughs, those occupying premises of an £8 rated value, those paying income tax, and those paying local taxes to the amount of 40s, should be enfranchised. With regard to redistribution, he proposed enlarging the Commons to 700 MPs. A total of 30 additional seats should be allocated to existing English boroughs, ten new borough constituencies, the University of London, and existing county constituencies. In Scotland, a total of seven additional seats should be allocated to one city, one borough, one county, and the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. In Ireland, a total of five additional MPs should be allocated to the city of Dublin and the counties of Cork, Tipperary, and Down.
