ABSTRACT
The sceptical and incisive Tory intelligence of Lord Robert Cecil (who became Lord Cranborne in 1865 and Lord Salisbury in 1868) grouped the various arguments proposed for further parliamentary Reform into three schools. First, those who were seeking to give a preponderance to intellect. Second, those ‘democratic’ Reformers who wished to give a preponderance to numbers. Third, those ‘symmetrical’ Reformers who sought to avoid the preponderance of any single class, but whose sense of order was shocked by existing ‘anomalies’. All these arguments he found wanting. Having dismissed the practicality of such plans, Cecil concluded with the argument that property and the ‘influence’ that pertained to it had always been and should continue to be the basis for engagement in political society.
