THE POLITICS IN THE 18TH CENTURY

PROSPERITY AND GROWTH

The Eighteenth Century was a very prosperous time for

Britain and its overseas colonies. It was in this period that
the United Kingdom of Great Britain became the
dominant global maritime power. Britain gained this new
power in part by fighting many wars against other
European colonial powers, including Spain, the
Netherlands, and especially France. Despite these wars,
the eighteenth century was particularly prosperous for
Britain’s colonies within the Atlantic coast’s temperate
zone, which later became the first thirteen U.S. states.
These colonies saw rapid growth in both population and
economy, growing from about 250,000 inhabitants in
1700 to close to three million by the outbreak of the
American Revolution in 1775–when Britain’s own
population was only about nine million. This context of
prosperity may help to explain why almost all politically
active Americans remained loyal, patriotic British subjects
until about 1765, when the Revolutionary period began.
PARLIAMENTARY SOVEREIGNTY
 After the Glorious Revolution of 1689, the
balance of power in England’s
parliamentary monarchy tipped definitively
away from the king and towards
Parliament. While Parliament only
gradually came to exercise the full powers
it had acquired in 1689, by the mid-1700s
there was no longer any doubt that
Britain’s government was characterized by
“Parliamentary sovereignty,” or the rule of
Parliament. In practice this meant the rule
of Parliament’s more powerful “lower”
house, the House of Commons. In this
system, both the House of Lords and the
king and the various agencies of the royal
bureaucracy continued to play important
roles. But real power–for example over
both legislation and taxation–now lay with
the House of Commons.
 BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION
 This electorate expected to be bribed. The going rate for even a ‘cheap’
constituency was £5 a vote, plus copious food and (especially) drink. The
politician-playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s expenses for election in
Stafford in 1780 were over £1,000.
 At least in Stafford the electors had some say in whom they voted for.
Many other constituencies were ‘pocket boroughs’, owned outright by a
major landowner. In such cases, the entire electorate were the
landowner’s tenants, obliged to vote (in a public ballot) as directed or
face eviction. In the 1760s, 205 of the 406 English constituencies were
controlled by just 111 aristocratic owners.
 If not wanted for a relative, seats could be sold to the highest acceptable
bidder. A single nomination could cost £9,000; the permanent purchase
of a constituency, and with it the ongoing right to nominate its two MPs,
cost much more. In 1802 Old Sarum in Wiltshire reputedly changed
hands for £60,000.
 Old Sarum was the most notorious of the 56 so-called ‘rotten boroughs’,
places whose right to return MPs extended back to the Middle Ages, but
which were almost completely depopulated by Georgian times.
 Meanwhile the people of the rapidly expanding new towns, such as
Manchester, had no direct parliamentary representation at all.
 REFORM

 Influential figures long accepted this system, partly because they

themselves relied upon aristocratic patronage. Growing agitation for reform
was hampered by the French Revolution and the subsequent wars with
France (1793–1815). Critics were marginalised or silenced, and regarded
as at best unpatriotic, at worst dangerous revolutionaries.
 A slender majority of the political establishment, however, recognised that
some degree of change was required to stave off revolution.
 In 1832, after two years of parliamentary manoeuvring and opposition from
the Duke of Wellington and the House of Lords, the first Reform Act for
England and Wales was passed. This abolished rotten and pocket boroughs
and created 135 new seats, giving 41 of the larger English towns their first
MPs.
 The electorate was increased from about 400,000 to 650,000, about one in
six of the adult male population. Yet the beneficiaries were the richer middle
classes, rather than the great majority of working people. The ruling elite
had expanded, but an elite still ruled.
THANKS FOR WATCHING
Schiopu Sorin Paul
Cront Razvan