| 书目名称 | Politics in the Age of Cobden | | 编辑 | John Prest | | 视频video | http://file.papertrans.cn/751/750438/750438.mp4 | | 图书封面 |  | | 出版日期 | Book 1977 | | 关键词 | political science; politics | | 版次 | 1 | | doi | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03473-4 | | isbn_softcover | 978-1-349-03475-8 | | isbn_ebook | 978-1-349-03473-4 | | copyright | John Prest 1977 |
| 1 |
,Introduction, |
John Prest |
|
Abstract
In any electoral system it is necessary to have some means of identifying the voters, of enabling those who are qualified to vote to proceed without hindrance to the poll, and of preventing those who are not qualified from doing so. As Macaulay put it in 1841, there had to be some way of letting ‘good’ voters in and of keeping ‘bad’ voters out,. and the problem was to devise a method that would do both, for every attempt to smooth the path of the genuine elector would make the way easy for the fraudulent voter too, while every check and test intended to eliminate the fraudulent voter would vex and deter the genuine one. And in England, where there were two electoral systems, representing the boroughs and the counties, side by side, and where until 1918 there were many different franchises, the problem was unusually complicated and intractable.
|
| 2 |
,The Reform Act of 1832, |
John Prest |
|
Abstract
When Wellington’s government fell in November 1830, and the Whigs, led by Earl Grey, came into office, they were committed to a reform of Parliament. The spectacular features of this reform were to be the redistribution of seats and the extension of the franchise, and these are the ones which historians have paid most attention to, but the Reformers were also committed to an improvement in the conduct of elections through the establishment of a register of electors, and Brougham later said that he regarded the system of registration as perhaps the most important part of the constructive clauses of the whole scheme.. For this reason the Whigs dealt with redistribution, the extension of the franchise, and the registration of voters all in one Bill. No doubt there was an element of tactical risk in this, for opponents could seek to exploit flaws in the registration system in order to discredit the Bill as a whole, but the risk was counterbalanced by the advantages of steering the registration clauses onto the statute book with the help of the popular breeze in favour of disfranchising Old Sarum and giving representatives to Manchester.
|
| 3 |
,A Sort of Battlefield, |
John Prest |
|
Abstract
All over the country contemporaries were glad to find that, after the initial registration in 1832, ‘the work of the two following years was performed with tolerable facility and expedition. … It was pretty generally pronounced that the registration clauses of the reform act worked well upon the whole, and that both the expense and the inconvenience of the revision would proceed for some years in a diminishing ratio.’. The number of days occupied by the revising banisters in England and Wales fell from 3662 in 1832 to 2632 in 1833 and 2585 in 1834, and the cost to the Treasury decreased from £30,400 in 1832 to £22,520 in 1834.
|
| 4 |
,The Parties Stand on Their Heads, |
John Prest |
|
Abstract
The events of the 1835 registration, when, ‘rather than yield the slightest advantage to the adversary’, the franchised populations of whole parishes were ‘immolated on the altar of party zeal’,. convinced everyone that something must be done, and it was generally understood that a new Bill, based upon the experience of the original registration in 1832 and the three annual revisions of 1833, 1834 and 1835, would be introduced in the next session. Although extremist editors of the Tory press sought to exploit dissatisfaction with the registration system in order to discredit the Reform Act as a whole, moderate Conservatives welcomed the prospect of putting an end to abuses which lowered politics in the esteem of the public, and in theory at least it ought to have been easy to bring the parties to agreement. But even in the comparatively ‘quiet’ days of 1834 it must have been apparent that any new procedure for the registration of voters could not but affect the franchise; and in a period when the parties were still trying to count their gains and losses at the registration of 1835 it was inconceivable that any measure could be drafted which would not be thought to be framed for electoral advantage. Party begets party begets party, and the prospects for reform were not as bright as they seemed.
|
| 5 |
,The Tremendous Engine, |
John Prest |
|
Abstract
Following his return to power in 1841, Peel no longer regarded the registration of voters in Ireland as a matter of great urgency. Why should he? The period of six years in which the ascendancy had felt itself threatened by the regime in Dublin Castle was over, and appointments to the Irish executive were now in his hands. With the death of Chief Justice Bushe in 1841, and the successive promotion to the bench of Blackburne, Lefroy and Jackson, the last two of whom had taken prominent parts in the debates upon Stanley’s Registration Bill in 1840, the Irish franchise could safely be left to the Irish judges. The abuses of the certificate system, which had been pronounced intolerable so long as the Whigs were in office, were now lightly borne, and Ministers preferred to re-model the system of registration in England before attempting to assimilate the system in Ireland to it.
|
| 6 |
,Had the Corn Laws Not Been Repealed So Soon, |
John Prest |
|
Abstract
Consistently with the stand they had taken while they were in opposition, Peel and his Ministers appear to have resolved, in 1844, to remodel the Irish registration system as closely as possible upon the English one. The revision was to take place every year, the solvent tenant test was to be re-enacted in its English form of ‘clear yearly value’, and both disappointed claimants and disappointed objectors were to be allowed to lodge appeals with the judges of the Court of Exchequer sitting in Dublin.. Thus far there were no surprises, and the draft Bill was not a conciliatory one. But Peel was tiring of party, and in an attempt to lay it to rest he conceded that existing electors should be allowed to remain on the registers until their certificates expired.. Most important of all, the government recognised that strict enforcement of the clear-yearly-value test would disfranchise anything up to two-thirds of the present electorate, and accepted the necessity to change the franchises.. Accordingly the Ministry proposed to lower the qualification for a freeholder from £10 to £5.
|
|
|
|Archiver|手机版|小黑屋|
派博传思国际
( 京公网安备110108008328)
GMT+8, 2025-8-10 03:41
发表于 2025-3-21 18:08:04
