ABSTRACT
In August 1858 Derby began consideration of the Conservative Reform bill promised for the 1859 session. Since 1851 he had indicated his willingness to modify the 1832 settlement, while being opposed to very extensive changes. His major concern was the intrusion of urban freeholders into the county electorates. In June 1858, two Commons votes had shown that Whigs and Liberals supported the equalisation of the borough and county franchises and were staunchly opposed to the ballot. Derby appointed a cabinet committee to draw up a measure, made up of himself, Disraeli, Sir John Pakington, Lord John Manners, Lord Salisbury, and the Commons chief whip Jolliffe. More recalcitrant ministers, such as Spencer Horatio Walpole, Joseph Henley, and Lord Hardwicke, were excluded. Derby indicated his flexibility on any new suffrage, being prepared to adopt an £8 rating franchise in the boroughs. The keystone of the whole, however, was urban free-holders being restricted to borough, not county, elections.
During the autumn, Russell kept publicly silent on Reform, preferring to await the emergence of Conservative differences. In October, however, the radical John Bright broke ground. In a series of public addresses in Birmingham, Manchester, and Glasgow, he demanded the borough franchise for all who paid rates and the county franchise for all lodgers who paid a rent of £10 or more. The public response to Bright staking out his position on Reform helped the government in defining a more moderate proposal acceptable to those alarmed by radical demands.
In November, Derby drafted a cabinet committee report. Its main recommendations were that the Reform bill should be confined to England and Wales, with the franchise and redistribution dealt with in one measure, and that the borough franchise be retained at its existing level and the county franchise lowered to a £10 rated suffrage. Whigs and Liberals had supported the equalisation of the franchise the previous June. Also, it recommended that a £20 rental lodger franchise be introduced in the boroughs, while freeholders enfranchised by urban property should be confined to voting in borough constituencies. On redistribution, it was proposed that boroughs with a population less than 500 be disfranchised and some two-Member borough constituencies with a population of between 5,000 and 15,000 lose a Member. County constituencies with a population above 100,000 were to be given three MPs, an additional 48 MPs in total, and an additional 18 MPs to be given to borough constituencies. The use of polling papers was to be made an option and the ballot to be resisted in any form.
Walpole and Henley fiercely objected to the committee recommendations, while some other ministers complained the recommendations did not go far enough. In the face of this dissension, in January Derby floated an alternative scheme proposing an £8 rating borough franchise and a rating franchise of £16 in the counties. However, Walpole and Henley persisted in their objections. At the same time, the Conservative election agent Philip Rose reported that Conservative constituency organisations and landowners supported the cabinet committee recommendations. In late January, Derby reverted to the proposals made in the committee report. Walpole and Henley subsequently resigned.
On 12 February 1859 the Conservative cabinet agreed to a £10 borough and £10 county franchise. The equalisation of the franchises being linked to the removal of urban freehold votes from the county electorates. A number of ‘merit franchises’, similar to those proposed by Russell in 1854, were also agreed. Those receiving pensions of £20 per annum, with deposits of £60 in Savings Banks, possessing £50 of shares or stock, university graduates, ministers of religion, barristers, attorneys, registered medical men, and certified schoolmasters were to be enfranchised. No skilled workman, on this basis, it was argued, need be long excluded from possessing a vote. The original redistribution of seats was dramatically reduced, with just 15 seats being reallocated. On the eve of the Reform measure being presented to the Commons, John Delane, editor of The Times, declared he would give the bill every support. The moderate Liberal Robert Lowe declared it showed the government’s wish to deal with the question on honest and intelligible principles.
Disraeli introduced the Conservative Reform bill to the Commons on 28 February 1859. At a meeting of Conservative MPs in Downing Street on 1 March, Derby urged them to vote unflinchingly for the entirety of the measure, individual clauses that might seem Liberal or extreme in isolation to be seen in the context of the bill as a whole. At a gathering of Conservative peers on 5 March, held by Derby, the measure was endorsed unanimously. On 10 March, Russell gave notice of a motion on the Second Reading of the bill objecting to the expulsion of urban freeholders from county electorates. Early in the morning of 1 April Russell’s motion passed by 330 to 291 votes. Derby received permission from the Queen to hold a general election, and parliament dissolved on 19 April.
In a full Lords on 4 April, with an election in prospect, Derby stated that the distracted state of parties in the Commons threatened the very basis of parliamentary government. Not bound by any common tie, parties combined to eject governments from office, but were unable to provide a strong stable ministry themselves. Over Reform in April, the ‘motley and heterogeneous materials’ making up the opposition had succumbed to faction and ignored the interest of the nation. The Conservative Reform bill had been defeated by ingenious manoeuvre, rather than by fair parliamentary process. Derby then plotted Russell’s political career as a lifetime of self-interested intrigue. In 1835, Russell had turned out Peel from office on an impracticable pretext. In 1852, he overthrew Derby’s ministry with an objectless coalition. In 1855, he ejected Lord Aberdeen from office in a personal coup d’état. In 1858, he overthrew Palmerston, only to combine with Palmerston during the past session over a cunning resolution sabotaging a moderate Reform settlement.
