Parliamentary reform : a letter to Richard Freedom, esq. on the re-distribution, extension, and purification of the elective franchise / by a revising barrister.

  • Eardley-Wilmot, John Eardley, 1810-1892.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Parliamentary reform : a letter to Richard Freedom, esq. on the re-distribution, extension, and purification of the elective franchise / by a revising barrister. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    18/70 (page 18)
    I next propose to give 1 Member to each of the follow- ing Boroughs, the inhabited houses in every one of them exceeding 2,000 in number:— Birkenhead . . Population. . 24,175 Inhabited Houses. 3,228 Gravesend . . . 16,633 2,722 Leamington . . O . 15,692 2,732 *Barnsley . . . 13,437 2,620 Doncaster . . . 12,052 2,583 ‘fWednesbury . . 11,914 2,189 Loughborough . . 10,900 2,324 Wisbeach . . . 10,594 2,141 Louth .... . 10,467 2,209 Troubridge . . . 10,157 2,080 Mansfield . . . 10,012 2,141 Total ... 11. In this list you will not find either of the large Lan- cashire boroughs, Staley Bridge or Burnley, because the preceding list added 2 members to the Lancashire bo- roughs ; but an alteration might be made in the arrange- ment, retaining Salford and Bury with 1 member each as 2^,- at present, and giving ^ member^respectively to Staley Bridge and Burnley. Of the above list of new boroughs,J 6 may be said to be agricultural, or at all events not * The reason for this preponderance given to Yorkshire, arises from the large number of boroughs in it, which would partially be disfranchised under the proposed plan, viz.—Malton, Knaresborough, Richmond and Ripon. f Staffordshire would lose one seat respectively for Lichfield and Tam- worth ; only a small part of the latter town is in Warwickshire. J I have not alluded to the proposal for renovating decayed and corrupt Boroughs by a fusion with neighbouring towns as yet unrepresented. Such a measure would altogether fail of its object; for the Mezentian policy, “ Mortua quinetiam jungebat corpora vivis,” would operate to lower and impair the vitality of those new electoral bodies thus brought into contact with corruption, while it could not reanimate to a state of healthful political existence the tainted subjects of so dangerous an experiment