Rotten Boroughs and Reform :: Victorian Era

Rotten Boroughs and domesticizeBackgroundA borough was a township possessing a municipal conjunction and special privileges conferred by royal charter (Oxford English Dictionary). Among these privileges, boroughs had the right to manoeuvre championatives to sevens. No new boroughs had been chartered in England since the 17th century (Corey 371). As the nation aged, its population and industry changed, creating a disparity between the nations demographics and its form of governmental representation. With the advent and unrestrained growth of the Industrial Revolution, population and riches concentrated and massed in northern towns and cities. While seats in fan tan remained occupied by representatives from the antiquated boroughs, no provisions were made to represent the growing commercial and professional classes (Corey 372).In some cases, boroughs had become sternly degraded due to poverty, depopulation, or even natural disasters. Another quaint borough, Dunwhich, had for centuries been buried under the North sea, that sea-side town having long since given guidance to erosion (Hughes 84). Such boroughs were considered rotten, as they were effectively controlled by wizard town corporation or large land-owner, as only the propertied velocity class was eligible to vote. Such aristocrats often controlled their constituents votes by bribery and compulsion (Corey 372). For example, see William Makepeace Thackerays installment novel, Vanity Fair. Thackeray uses Queens Crawley to represent a rotten borough. renewThe 1832 Reform Bill enfranchised lawyers, factory owners, merchants, and other members of the middle class, stipulating as a requirement at least a rental charter of at least fifty pounds per year (Bloy). In addition, fifty-six white-haired boroughs were abolished, their Parliamentary seats redistributed among some new boroughs and counties, somewhat more(prenominal) appropriate to population demographics (Corey 372). Not all of the rotten bo roughs were eliminated at this point, however. general enfranchisement occurred slowly, as successive acts made their way through Parliament during the Victorian age. The 1867 Reform Bill lowered the stipulations to five pounds per annum for leaseholders, adding approximately one million voters. The subsequent Reform Bill of 1885 added two million voters to the electorate by enfranchising households in the counties as well (Hughes 84).