William Ewart Gladstone by Rupert Potter

In the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

under the premiership of William Gladstone, the Representation of the People Act 1884 ( 48 & 49 Vict. c. 3), also known informally as the Third Reform Act, and the Redistribution Act of the following year were laws which further extended the suffrage in the UK after the

Derby Derby ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area on the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire is named after Derby, which was its original co ...

government's

Reform Act 1867 The Representation of the People Act 1867 ( 30 & 31 Vict. c. 102), known as the Reform Act 1867 or the Second Reform Act, is an act of the British Parliament that enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the ...

. Taken together, these measures extended the same

voting Voting is the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representative ...

qualifications as existed in the towns to the countryside, more than doubling the electorate in the counties, and essentially established the modern one member constituency as the normal pattern for

parliamentary In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

representation. The bill was introduced by Gladstone on 28 February 1884. The Conservative-dominated House of Lords rejected the bill on 17 July but then passed it. It gained royal assent on 6 December of that year. The Act extended the 1867 concessions from the

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English language, English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History ...

s to the countryside. All men paying an annual rental of £10 and all those holding land valued at £10 now had the vote. This significantly increased the electorate; in the 1880 general election, before the passing of the Act, 3,040,050 voters were registered, while in the 1885 general election, after the passing of the Act, there were 5,708,030 registered voters. The bill was so objectionable to the House of Lords that

Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British politican, starting as Conservative MP for Newark and later becoming the leader of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party. In a career lasting over 60 years, he ...

was forced to separate the legislation into two bills,McKechnie, ''The reform of the House of Lords'' p.49 the second being the

Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vict. c. 23) was an Act of Parliament (United Kingdom), act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (sometimes called the "Reform Act of 1885"). It was a piece of electoral reform legislation that r ...

, which redistributed constituencies in order to equalise representation within constituencies across the UK. The 1884 Reform Act did not establish

universal suffrage Universal suffrage or universal franchise ensures the right to vote for as many people bound by a government's laws as possible, as supported by the " one person, one vote" principle. For many, the term universal suffrage assumes the exclusion ...

: although the size of the electorate was increased considerably, all women and 40% of men were still without the vote. Male suffrage varied throughout the kingdom, too: in England and Wales, two in three adult males had the vote; in Scotland, three in five did; but in Ireland, the figure was only one in two.

Key sections of the Act

''Section 2'': This extended a uniform household (freeholder and leaseholder) franchise to all parliamentary boroughs and

counties A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

in the

. ''Section 3'': Men inhabiting a dwelling-house as an employee, whose employer did not live there, were to be treated for franchise purposes as if they were occupying as tenants. ''Section 4'': Prohibition of multiplicity of votes. This was not to stop people acquiring multiple votes in different constituencies (

plural voting Plural voting is the practice whereby one person might be able to vote multiple times in an election. It is not to be confused with a plurality voting system, which elects winners by relative lead in vote tallies and does not necessarily involve pl ...

was still permitted), but to restrict sub-division of one property to qualify multiple voters (so-called

faggot voter A faggot voter or faggot was a person who qualified to vote in an election with a restricted suffrage only by the exploitation of loopholes in the regulations. Typically, faggot voters satisfied a property qualification by holding the title to a ...

s). ''Section 5a'': A man who was a £10 occupier in a county or borough was to be a voter in that county or borough. This assimilated the previous county occupation franchise and borough occupation franchise into a uniform occupation franchise. ''Section 6'': Occupation in a borough was not to confer a county franchise.

Effects

As many crofters in the

Scottish Highlands The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...

qualified as £10 occupiers, the Act empowered Scottish Gaels to take action against evictions and rent increases at the end of the

Highland Clearances The Highland Clearances ( , the "eviction of the Gaels") were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly in two phases from 1750 to 1860. The first phase resulted from Scottish Agricultural R ...

. Their votes led to the formation of the Crofters' Party and

Highland Land League The first Highland Land League () emerged as a distinct political force in Scotland during the 1880s, with its power base in the country's Highlands and Islands. It was known also as the Highland Land Law Reform Association and the Crofters' Par ...

, and eventually the passage of the

Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 The Crofters Holdings (Scotland) Act 1886 ( 49 & 50 Vict. c. 29) () is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that created legal definitions of ''crofting parish'' and ''crofter'', granted security of land tenure to crofters and produced ...

, which addressed many of their grievances and put an end to the

References

* ''The Statutes: Second Revised Edition, Vol. XVI 1884–1886'', (printed by authority 1900)

External links

Digital reproduction of the Original Act on the Parliamentary Archives catalogue
{{UK electoral reform, state=expanded 1884 in British law Representation of the People Acts December 1884 United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1884 William Ewart Gladstone

Key sections of the Act

Effects

See also

References

External links