II
Parliament is due to meet next Tuesday, on February 3. Of the three principal issues which will take up the early debates, we have briefly discussed two already: Palmerston's dismissal[140] and the state of the defences in the event of a war with France. There remains the third, which for the development of England is by far the most important: electoral reform.
The new Reform Bill which Russell is due to present at the very outset will provide sufficient opportunity to examine the general significance of electoral reform in England more closely. For today, since we are only concerned with communicating and elucidating a number of rumours about this bill, the observation will suffice that in this whole matter the immediate issue is solely how much of their political power will be retained by the reactionary or conservative classes, i.e. the landed aristocracy, the rentiers, the stock-exchange speculators, the colonial landowners, the shipping magnates and a section of the merchants and bankers, and how much they will surrender to the industrial bourgeoisie, which heads all the progressive and revolutionary classes. For the present we are not concerned here with the proletariat at all.
The Daily News, the voice of the industrial bourgeoisie in London and a good source in such matters, gives some information about the Whig Ministry's new Reform Bill. According to this information, the intended reforms would touch upon three aspects of the British electoral system.
Hitherto every Member of Parliament had to show that he owned landed property worth at least £300 before he could be admitted. However this condition, in many cases embarrassing, was almost always evaded by bogus purchases and bogus contracts. It had long ago become ineffective as far as the industrial bourgeoisie was concerned; it is now to be dropped completely. Its abolition is one of the "six points" of the proletarian People's Charter,[141] and it is interesting to observe how one of these six points (they are all six very middle-class and have already been implemented in the United States) is already being officially acknowledged.
Hitherto the electoral system was organised in the following way: according to ancient English custom some Members were sent by the counties[3] and some by the towns. Any person wanting to vote in a county had either to own land with an annual value of £2 entirely in his own right (freehold property)b or hold rented land with an annual value of £50. In the towns on the other hand any man could vote who occupied a house whose rent was £10 and who paid the poor-rate corresponding to that amount. Whilst in those towns which sent Members, the mass of small tradesmen and craftsmen, i.e. all the petty bourgeoisie, were admitted to the suffrage by this arrangement, in the county elections the aristocracy's tenants-at-will,c i.e. tenants who could be given notice to quit from one year to the next and who were therefore
Engels uses the English term.— Ed.
In the original version the German expression is followed by the English term freehold property" in brackets.— Ed.
Engels uses the English term.— Ed.
completely dependent on their landlords, represented the overwhelming majority. Last year Mr. Locke King proposed extending the norm of £10 rents, which applied in the towns, to the counties as well, and obtained a large majority for this proposal against the ministers in a sparsely attended House. It is said that Russell now intends to reduce the amount for the counties to £10 and for the towns to £5. The effect of such a measure would be very significant. In the towns it would immediately give the franchise to the better paid among the proletariat, which would make the election of Chartist representatives in some large towns very probable, whilst in the medium-sized and smaller towns the industrial bourgeoisie would receive an enormous increase in votes and in parliamentary seats. And in the counties all citizens of small and moderate means in small towns without their own parliamentary representatives would at once be admitted to the suffrage; they would constitute the overwhelming majority in most cases and by their numbers and relative independence of the few great noble families who control the counties at present they would put an end to the electoral terrorism hitherto practised by these magnates. Furthermore this rural petty bourgeoisie is even now increasingly succumbing to the influence of the industrial bourgeoisie and would thus open up a significant number of the counties to them.
The electoral constituencies have hitherto varied enormously in size and importance; the number of representatives bore no relationship whatsoever to the size of the population or number of electors. One or two hundred electors in one place sent as many representatives as six to eleven thousand electors in another place. This inequality was particularly marked in the towns; and particularly the small towns with few electors were the scene of the most scandalous bribery (e.g. St. Albans) or absolute electoral dictatorship by this or that great landowner. According to the report in The Daily News eight of the smallest towns with the right to elect a Member of Parliament are now to be deprived of their representatives and the remaining small towns which elect Members of Parliament are to be lumped together with other neighbouring country towns, up to now represented only in the counties, in such a. way that the size of the electorate is significantly increased. This would resemble the system of urban grouping which has existed in Scotland ever since the Union with England (1707).[142] That the industrial bourgeoisie may likewise expect an increase of political power from such a measure, timid though it is, is proved by the outstanding importance which they have for a long time attached to the equalisation of the electoral constituencies, over and above any other issue of parliamentary reform. In addition it is reported that London and Lancashire, in other words two of the principal centres of the industrial bourgeoisie, are to receive increased representation in Parliament.
If Russell really intends to present this Bill, then according to past experience, this is indeed a great deal for the little man. It appears that Peel's laurels will not let him rest and that he too has resolved to be "bold" for once. This boldness is admittedly accompanied by all the timorousness and cautious circumspection of the English Whig, and in the present state of public opinion in England will appear bold to no one but himself and his Whig colleagues. But after the hesitation, vacillation and second thoughts, after the repeated and always unsuccessful putting-out of feelers with which this diminutive peer has occupied his time since the end of the previous session, one might nevertheless have expected less than the above proposals—always providing of course that he does not change his mind before Tuesday.[143]
The industrial bourgeoisie, it does not need to be spelled out, are demanding a great deal more than that. They are demanding household suffrage,[3] i.e. the vote for every man occupying a house or part of a house on which he is required to pay rates, voting by ballot and a total revision of constituency boundaries to ensure equal representation for equal numbers of electors and equal wealth. They will haggle hard and long with the ministry and extract every possible concession from it before agreeing a price for their support. The English industrialist is a good businessman and will certainly dispose of his vote for the highest price obtainable.
Incidentally it is already now becoming evident that even the above ministerial minimum of electoral reform cannot but have the effect of strengthening the power of that class which already controls England in practice and is making giant strides towards the political recognition of its hegemony: the industrial bourgeoisie. The proletariat, whose independent struggle for its own interests against the industrial bourgeoisie will not begin until such time as the political supremacy of that class is established, the proletariat will in any circumstances also derive some advantage from this electoral reform. How great this advantage will be however depends simply on whether the debate and eventual
Engels uses the English term.— Ed.
establishment of electoral reform occurs before the trade crisis breaks or rather coincides with it; for the proletariat, for the time being, only plays an active part, at the front of the stage, at great moments of decision, like Fate in classical tragedy.
Manchester, January 30, 1852
Signed: F.Engels
Endnotes
[140] [Editorial note 140: text not recovered from the source scan.]
[141] [Editorial note 141: text not recovered from the source scan.]
[3] Serfdom was abolished in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine annexed to France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, as were the privileges of the nobility and the clergy, and the church estates.
[142] [Editorial note 142: text not recovered from the source scan.]
[143] [Editorial note 143: text not recovered from the source scan.]
[3] Serfdom was abolished in the territories along the left bank of the Rhine annexed to France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, as were the privileges of the nobility and the clergy, and the church estates.