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Property and ‘Virtual Representation’ in Eighteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Paul Langford
Paul Langford
Affiliation:
Lincoln College, Oxford
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Extract

The representative credentials of the unreformed parliament are a subject of enduring historical interest. It is not surprising that much of that interest has focused on the electoral basis of the house of commons. From the beginnings of an organized movement for parliamentary reform and the first systematic investigations of the subject, criticism fastened on the anomalies and inequities of a manifestly outdated franchise. Modern scholarship, emancipated from the bias of whig history, has been less harsh in its judgement, but equally preoccupied with elections and the electorate. Successive studies have demonstrated the vitality of popular electoral politics not merely in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, before the onset of so-called oligarchy, but even in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when contemporary criticism was at its height.1 One of the unintended consequences of this successful search for the politics of participation has been a tendency to divert attention from the actual working of parliament, except in terms of those periodic crises, and great national issues, which were of manifest importance in the party politics of the day. Yet parliament in the eighteenth century concerned itself with an extraordinary variety of topics, and burdened itself with a remarkable quantity of business. After the revolution of 1688 it met annually for long, and lengthening sessions. It increasingly involved itself in the operations of government and played an ever more important part in the making and revision of law.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 83 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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3 (Doncaster, 1783).

4 It was normal to include the M.P.s for every borough, however ‘rotten’, when publicizing the parliamentary affairs of a county as a whole. The reformers themselves did so; see Wyvill papers (5 vols., York, 1794), I, 175, 194Google Scholar.

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6 For this purpose England is divided into five regions, of roughly equal population in the late eighteenth century, as follows: North: Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, Durham, Lancashire, Yorkshire: Midlands: Monmouthshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Cheshire, Nottinghamshire; East: Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Essex; South-west: Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire; South-east: Middlesex, Berkshire, Surrey, Sussex, Kent. The comparison depends on land tax quotas, listed in the annual act of parliament, levying the land tax; population estimates presented in Deane, P. and Cole, W. A., British economic growth 1685–1959 (Cambridge, 1969)Google Scholar; taxable house returns for 1758 at P.R.O., T.35.19; militia quotas listed in Western, J. R., The English militia in the eighteenth century (London, 1965), pp. 449–50Google Scholar; male servant duty returns at P.R.O., T.47.8; candle duty returns for 1756 at P.R.O., CUST.48.15; plate duty returns for 1757 at P.R.O., T.47.5.

7 These were the sums payable when the land tax was levied at a rate of 45. in the £. For a contemporary discussion of the so-called ‘exemption’ of the north-west, see London Magazine, 1766, pp. 642–3; its basis is explained by Beckett, J. V., ‘Local custom and the “new taxation” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the example of Cumberland’, Northern History, XII (1976), 105–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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20 I Henry V, c. 1; 8 Henry VI, c. 7; 10 Henry VI, c. 2; 23 Henry VI, c. 15.

21 Commons Journals, XXXIV, 705; see , E. and Porritt, A. G., The unreformed house of commons: parliamentary representation before 1832 (2 vols., Cambridge, 1903), I, 122Google Scholar.

22 The memorable case of Denzil Onslow, esq., tryed at the assizes in Surrey, July the 20th (1681), p. 2.

23 Commons Journals, XXXIV, 705–6.

24 14 George III, c. 58.

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29 14 May 1743.

30 (London, 1733), p. 440. The book was suppressed, as subversive, on the point of publication.

31 This, and the further information on the subject of residence below is calculated on the basis of M.P.s' addresses given in the volumes of the history of parliament; in each case the date selected is that of dissolution for every parliament from the Septennial Act to 1790, and also for the parliament of 1685; some adjustment has been made to take account of information from other sources, and also to exclude what were plainly London ‘town houses’.

32 ‘Seats’ are those for every constituency lying within the specified county, including CinquePorts, universities, etc.; ‘M.P.s resident’ are those with an address in the county. ‘.5’ represents an M.P. with a residence in two counties; the 1780 proposal is that presented by the Westminster Sub-Committee, 27 May 1780 (Wyvill papers, I, 241); the 1782 proposal is contained in SirSinclair, J., Lucubrations during a short recess (London, 1782)Google Scholar; the 1783 proposal is that of Facts, or, a comparative view of the population and representation of England and Wales. There were 513 seats for England and Wales, but some of the totals fall short of this figure. The balance of resident M.P.s were those with no address, together with Scots, Irish, and West Indians. Sinclair's schemeincluded the addition of 8 seats for Scotland, bringing its total to 53. Facts hesitantly allowed Rutland one M.P., at the cost of overshooting its total. The 1780 scheme placed Northumberland Rutland one M.P., at the cost of overshooting its total. The 1780 scheme placed Northumberland with Durham, and Monmouthshire with Wales.

33 The following figures show resident M.P.s at the dissolution of each parliament from the Septennial Act to 1790, together with that summoned in 1685. For the purposes of comparison the figures give the resident M.P.s in each region, expressed as a percentage of the total for England and Wales (i.e. 513).

34 ‘Sykes’ attendance at Quarter Sessions is recorded in the Order and Minute Books, in Berkshire Record Office.

35 A treatise concerning civil government, pp. 291–2.

36 Digest of the general highway and turnpike laws (London, 1778), pp. 278–9Google Scholar.

37 6 George III, c. 22.

38 London Magazine, 1767, p. 388.

39 A word in season, to the traders and manufacturers of Great Britain (London, 1792)Google Scholar: see Hamilton, H. W., Doctor Syntax: a silhouette of William Combe, Esq. (1742–1823), (London, 1969), p. 166Google Scholar.

40 Resident M.P.s are those with an address in the county, regardless of whether they also had an address in another county; M.P.s with property are those who paid land tax as owners of lands within the county: in all cases the land tax assessments are for 1784 (or the nearest available date in a few cases) and have been consulted in the relevant county record office.

41 Debates of…Grey, IV, 2.

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43 In Leicestershire, a high proportion of property was owned by peers; given the legislative importance of the house of lords in the eighteenth century, this could be almost as important in representative terms as property owned by M.P.s. It should be noted, too, that landowning M.P.s, for the purpose of the statistics displayed above, are M.P.s who appear in the land tax assessments; younger sons and other relatives of peers are not included unless they are listed as owning property in their own right, though many of them had close links with peers or others who did pay the land tax. If included, this further form of indirect representation would add considerably to the potential influence of highly aristocratic areas in the commons. Both Leicestershire and Derbyshire, for instance, would come into this category, whereas Essex and Surrey, counties dominated by gentry rather than peers, would not.

44 Kent (Filmer Honeywood), Suffolk (Sir Charles Bunbury), Cheshire (John Crewe), Berkshire (John Elwes), Surrey (Sir John Mawbey), Northumberland (Sir William Middleton), Hertfordshire (William Plumer), Dorset (Humphry Sturt).

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46 Presumably the change of policy in this respect was an attempt to save space in the printed journals, at a time when the volume of parliamentary business was growing rapidly.

47 The manner in which members of select committees were chosen remains obscure. The formal procedure is described by Thomas, P. D. G., The house of commons in the eighteenth century (Oxford, 1971), p. 58Google Scholar; individual M.P.s were permitted to nominate two members each, and the Speaker added general categories of M.P.s with specialist or local knowledge. It is difficult to believe that the first part of this process was being executed in the mid-eighteenth century, though the second certainly was. My own impression is that the clerks often recorded the names of all M.P.s who were in the House at the time a select committee was named. The result was a mixture which included M.P.s actually awaiting some other item of business, or present for incidental reasons. Lambert, S., Bills and acts: legislative procedure in eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1971), p. 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests that written lists of M.P.s were used, perhaps handed in by the member in charge of a bill. But committee membership under George II seems too eccentric on some occasions always to be explained in this way.

48 The illustrations which follow are drawn from an analysis of two committees, those on successive Wendover Road bills in 1751 and 1766 (Commons Journals, XXVI, 53; XXX, 533). Because of the route taken by this turnpike, the county as a whole was affected. Members who had no connexion with Buckinghamshire and whose presence in other committees on the same day suggests that their interest was in other business, are excluded. Buckinghamshire produced perhaps the most notable of all collisions between local legislation and party politics, the Buckinghamshire Assize Bill of 1748; unfortunately, because it was dealt with by a committee of the whole House rather than a select committee, and no division lists have survived, there is no scope for analysis of the M.P.s involved.

49 Commons Journals, XXI, 67, 78–9, 82, 85, 90, 97, 103–4, 106–7. 130–1, 135, 161, 163.

50 London Gazette, 7 October 1775.

51 The Humble Address and Petition…Lancashire, presented 18 December 1775. The M.P.s were Lord George Cavendish (Derbyshire), Lord John Cavendish (York), Sir Michael Le Fleming (Westmorland), Harbord Harbord (Norwich), Wenman Coke (Norfolk).

52 T. W. Coke (Norfolk), J. W. Egerton (Brackley), Sir Thomas Egerton (Lancashire), T. P. Legh (Newton), Sir George Warren (Beaumaris).

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58 London Magazine, 1774, p. 521; the House was provoked to pass a standing order restricting the examination of counter-petitions as a result of the business congestion caused by the Selby—Leeds affair.

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63 Commons Journals, XXI, 245.

64 Commons Journals, XXII, 50, 75–6, 88, 90, 95, 101, 126, 142, 156, 162.

65 British Chronicle, 4 Mar. 1779.

66 Commons Journals, XXXII, 294.

67 Henson's history of framework knitters, intr. Chapman, S. D. (Newton Abbot, 1970), p. 401Google Scholar. The significance of the Cornwall and Devon miners was misunderstood by Henson and by J. D. Chambers in his account. (Nottinghamshire in the eighteenth century (2nd edn, London, 1966), pp. 37–40Google Scholar.) In both the venal Cornish members are said to have been suborned by one of the hosiery employers. But as Wilkes was implying, it was the ministerial vote which was being deployed. North had incidentally entertained doubts about the Spitalfields legislation in 1773.

68 Commons Journals, XX, 746–7.

69 Holmes, C., Seventeenth-century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980), pp. 227–8Google Scholar.

70 Most proposals for reform included a substantial addition to the county M.P.s; a Qualification bill was introduced in 1779 and narrowly defeated; Commons Journals. XXXVII, 918.

71 There is an obvious contrast with other parts of the realm. Scotland not only had direct representation of its own, but also had a growing share in English constituencies, in respect of Scots sitting for boroughs in south Britain; Ireland, which was indirectly represented in the house of lords similarly had representatives sitting for constituencies in England; the West Indies was represented by a small but vocal and influential group of proprietors in the commons.

72 For example, Commons Journals, XXXIX, 82, 126–7, 149, 176, 191.

73 Lofft's appeal, with supporting calculations, was one of the untitled tracts issued by the Society for Constitutional Information; it is to be found in the British Library, E.2102.163(23).

74 A treatise concerning civil government, p. 293.

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76 Hamilton, H. W., Dr. Syntax, p. 166Google Scholar.