ABSTRACT
Organisation and management will beat the strongest party that ventures to rely upon political principle and personal zeal. The authors of The New Law and Practice of Registration and Elections assured their readers in 1868. Confidence of this sort proved a major stimulant to the development of party organisation at all levels in late Victorian Britain. The old style of structural improvisation suitable for an era of small electorates and mass corruption had increasingly broken down as the number of voters rose sharply from 2,445, 000 in 1868 to 5,708,000 in 1885 and 7,904,000 by 1911. Under the control of the Chief Whip, its secretary from 1877 was Thomas Robert who drew on earlier experience as organiser of the Anti-Corn Law League to control all manner of extra-parliamentary electoral management with regard to candidates, agents, speakers and literature.
