UNIT 1-Lesson 1: What was voting like in the 1780s? Flashcards
Electoral system
Consists of set of rules which must be followed for a vote to be considered valid.
How votes are counted and aggregated to yield a final result.
Political system
Set of formal legal institutions that constitute a “government” or a “state”
Give examples of political systems.
Democracy
Republics
Monarchies
Communism
Dictatorships
Aristocracy
Nobles, or peers, who inherited land titles which gave them the right to sit in the House of Lords
Nonconformists
People who were protestant but not members of the Church of England
Examples of nonconformists
Baptists
Quakers
Presbyterians
Methodists
French Revolution
Series of events, starting in 1789, which led to the fall of the monarchy and the end of the aristocracy in France
Pocket borough
Borough constituency that was in control, hence in the pocket, of a particular patron, usually a large landowner
Who were majority of the pocket boroughs controlled by?
Tories
Rotten Borough
Borough with few or no constituents yet which returned at least 1 MP to Parliament
Deferential
Showing respect for people, in this case for those of a ‘higher’ class
Why was Britain undergoing sweeping economic and social changes in 1780?
Industrial Revolution
King in 1780
George III
Who was government and Parliament dominated by?
Landowning classes
Why did the monarch have to listen to Parliament?
Needed to influence policies and get them to agree to taxes
Who were the most important landowning families?
Members of the aristocracy
Through what right, did the aristocracy gain seats in the House of Lords?
Hereditary
Where else did landowning classes hold the highest positions?
Church
Armed services
Judiciary
Civil service
Local government
What type of men could vote?
Those who had their money in trade or industry
What 2 parties did majority of the MPs belong to?
Tories
Whigs
What powers did the monarch have?
Could appoint and dismiss prime ministers
How many MPs were there in 1780?
658
How many MPs are there now?
650
What was the country divided up into?
Constituencies
How many MPs did most constituencies return?
2
What 2 types of constituencies where there?
County seats
Borough seats
How many county seats where there in England?
82
How many borough seats where there in England?
403
How many seats did Oxford and Cambridge universities have each?
2
Where were the counties mainly?
Rural areas
Where were the borough mainly?
Large rural towns and ports
UK population in 1780
14 million
How many men had the right to vote?
Less than half a million
What percentage of the total population had the right to vote?
5%
In counties, which men could vote?
‘Forty-shilling freeholders.’
Who were the ‘Forty-shilling freeholders.’?
All men who owned freehold (owned it) property worth 40 shillings a year could vote
Why may voters have voted for the biggest landowner in pocket boroughs?
They were his tenants
They wanted to stay on the right side of the local magistrate (the MP).
They sold their votes
In extreme cases, what was the lowest amount of voters in a borough?
10-20
How were rotten boroughs created?
What had been a town in the Middle Ages had now been abandoned
How many constituencies had fewer than 50 votes each?
Over 50
What could happen with rotten boroughs?
Could be bought and sold.
Became someone’s property.
Why did elections last several days?
To allow everyone time to get to the polling station.
There was a secret ballot.
True or false?
False-voting was in the open.
Electors voted by show of hands
What percentage of county electors came under the influence of their landlords?
25%
If landlords could not influence electors, what could they do?
Bribe with:
Food
Drink
Entertainment
Transport
What would landlords do if voters could not completely be relied to vote in the desired way?
Would be ‘cooped’.
‘Cooped’ meaning
Being kidnapped and kept drunk until the elections were over.
Reasons why elections where not challenged or opposed to.
- Patron of a pocket borough had no opponents and both seats went to his nominee.
- Deals were done between leading families so each took a seat in Parliament
What areas of England were over-represented?
`Rural south
What areas of England were under-represented?
Urban North and Midlands
How many seats in the HoC were controlled by aristocrats i.e., members of the House of Lords?
Over 200
Points to support old system.
- Different types of voting qualifications gave a wide variety of people the vote.
2, Different interest were represented e.g., tenants’ interests represented by their landowners
3, Deferential society: many voted out of respect for local leader since it was in their best interests/ looked up to local leader
- Pocket and rotten boroughs allowed young talented men to rise to top whilst still young.
- Lasted hundreds of years-served Britain well since Britain was the most advanced industrial nation, with a huge overseas empire.
- Britain had avoided violence and killings of revolutionary France, so why challenge the stability
