In our household we are hoping for a late election. My son turns 18 in the summer, so the timing will determine whether or not he can vote in the forthcoming general election. This approaching milestone makes my current work on citizenship education all the more pertinent. Alongside this, in my classes on early modern history at Newcastle University I have been exploring with my students the development of political institutions between 1500 and 1800. In discussing the constitutional changes that occurred during the Civil Wars, or the proposals put forward by reformers in the late eighteenth century, some students have commented that they do not feel they have a good understanding of the workings of our political system today and that school did little to prepare them for their role as adult citizens.
The members of the Society for Constitutional Information (SCI), which was established in 1780, were equally concerned about the lack of an understanding of the constitution among residents of Britain in the late eighteenth century. Of course, the circumstances then were very different. In 1780 it is estimated that only 3% of the population of the United Kingdom had the vote. Today the percentage is approximately 68%. The main activity of the SCI was to disseminate knowledge of the British constitution among the population as a means of gaining support for the campaign for parliamentary reform.
In their first Address to the Public, the Society set out the fundamental belief that underpinned their commitment to reform:
LAW, TO BIND ALL, MUST BE ASSENTED TO BY ALL (An Address to the public,
from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1780, p. 1).
Statue of John Cartwright in Cartwright Gardens, Bloomsbury, London. Image by Rachel Hammersley
This reflects an understanding of liberty that insists that people are free if they are subject only to laws that they (or their representatives) have made. The idea was outlined more fully in the Declaration of Rights written by one of the SCI's founding members Major John Cartwright:
Fourthly, That they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of Representatives, do
not enjoy liberty; but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes, and to their
Representative: for to be enslaved, is to have Governors whom other men have set over
us, and to be subject to laws made by the Representatives of others, without having had
Representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.
Fifthly, That a very great majority of the Commonalty of this Realm are denied the
privilege of voting for Representatives in Parliament; and consequently, they are
enslaved to a small number, who do now enjoy this privilege exclusively to
themselves (John Cartwright, A Declaration of the Rights of Englishmen. London, no
date, p. 2).
This reflects the concept of Neo-Roman liberty analysed by the eminent historian Quentin Skinner, which has its origins in the Roman law distinction between those who are free and those who are slaves. Judged according to this principle, the members of the SCI concluded that the vast majority of the population of the United Kingdom were not free. Indeed they went so far as to argue that a small number of individuals without 'virtue' or 'abilities' were effectively disenfranchising their electors (A Second Address to the Public from the Society for Constitutional Information. London, 1782, p. 9).
They went on to outline three reform proposals that would need to be enacted to remedy the situation. First, they called for a redistribution of parliamentary seats.
This issue was summarised in the Report of the Sub-Committee of Westminster produced in March 1780. That committee included a number of members of the SCI and its reports were printed by the SCI for distribution:
That it appears to this Sub Committee, that many towns and boroughs, formerly
intitled "for their repute and population," to send members to Parliament, have
since fallen into decay, yet continue to have a representation equal to the most
opulent counties and cities; while other towns and places, which have risen into
consideration, and become populous and wealthy, have no representatives in
Parliament (Westminster Committee. King's Arms Tavern, March 20, 1780. Report of
the Sub Committee, appointed to enquire into the state of the representation of this country.
1780, p. 2).
Nine years later, the SCI declared that their 'most immediate object' was to gather and then publish 'a compleat State of the representation of the people in Parliament' and to this end they invited people to report on the situation regarding voters and elections in their local constituencies (The National Archives: TS 11/961. SCI Minutes for Friday 29th May 1789). The results appear in one of the SCI volumes held at the National Archives.
Concern at the unequal distribution of parliamentary seats was not a new idea in the late eighteenth century. In the Agreement of the People that was presented by an alliance of soldiers and civilian radicals to the General Council of the Army at the Putney Debates in October 1647 it was asserted:
That the People of England being at this day very unequally distributed by
Counties, Cities, & Boroughs, for the election of their Deputies in Parliament, ought
to be more indifferently proportioned, according to the number of the Inhabitants:
the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down
before the end of this present Parliament. (An Agreement of the People, for a firme and
present Peace, upon grounds of Common-Right. London, 1647, p. 2).
Secondly, the SCI advocated universal manhood suffrage, which set them apart from some of the more conservative reform societies at the time. As Cartwright declared in the second article of his Declaration of Rights:
That every man of the Commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and
criminals) is of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the
full enjoyment of liberty. (Cartwright, A Declaration of the Rights of Englishmen, p. 1).
Universal manhood suffrage was also not a completely new idea in 1780. At the Putney Debates, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough voiced the stirring line (now recalled in a plaque in Putney Church): 'for really I thinke that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest hee'. He went on:
and therfore truly, Sir, I thinke itt's cleare, that every man that is to live under a
Government ought first by his owne consent to putt himself under that
Government; and I doe thinke that the poorest man in England is nott att all bound
in a stricte sence to that Government that hee hath not had a voice to putt himself
under (The Clarke Papers, ed. C. H. Firth. London, 1992, p. 301).
Engraving of the quotation from Thomas Rainsborough in St Mary’s Church, Putney. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
In those debates the alternative view was expressed by Colonel Henry Ireton (Oliver Cromwell's son-in-law) who insisted that only those with landed property should be allowed to vote, since only they had a fixed interest in the country and could, therefore, be trusted to make decisions in the common good. The SCI turned Ireton's assumption on its head, insisting:
The poor man has an equal right, but more need, to have representatives in the
legislature than the rich one (An Address to the Public, p. 7).
The third demand made by the SCI was for more frequent - ideally annual - parliaments. Major Cartwright's Declaration asserted it is 'the right of the Commonalty of this Realm to elect a new House of Commons once in every year, according to ancient and sacred laws of the land' (Cartwright, A Declaration, p. 2). If elections were held less frequently, he argued, those people who had recently arrived in an area would be deprived of their right. Moreover, longer parliaments would be more susceptible to corruption and undue influence.
Once again the roots of this concern can be found in the seventeenth century. Between 1629 and 1640 Charles I ruled without calling parliament. In theory there was nothing wrong with this since it was up to the monarch to call Parliament when (s)he wanted (usually when they needed money). But Charles's behaviour prompted anger and when Parliament met in 1640 one of the first actions it took was to institute a Triennial Act which required Parliament to be called at least once every three years. Some at the time felt that even this did not go far enough and called for annual parliaments as a crucial mechanism to mitigate the corrupting effects of power. As John Streater explained:
A Free State, governed by Annual Representatives, is Naturally good, it cannot be bad;
for that no one can obtain in such a Government opportunity to do Hurt: and it
behoveth every one of them to do all the good they can, in regard that they must
Return to a private state and Condition, in which they shall participate and be
sharers of the good they have procured, or been parties in ordaining (J. S. [John
Streater], A Shield Against the Parthian Dart. London, 1659, pp. 16-17).
If we compare the SCI demands to how things are today, we see that one demand - universal manhood suffrage - has not only been achieved, but surpassed. Today it is not only adult men who have the vote, but women too. This is especially interesting given that this was seen as the most extreme demand in the eighteenth century and one that not all supporters of reform at that time were willing to endorse. A second demand - an equal distribution of parliamentary seats - is recognised as important and the distribution is continually updated. A local election leaflet that came through my front door this week explains:
Following a review by the Boundary Commissions, changes have been made in the
coming elections for electing your Ward Councillors and member of Parliament
(MP). The changes aim to rebalance the number of electors in each area and ensure
that they are represented effectively by the candidates you elect.
Yet the third demand - annual parliaments - has neither been put into practice, nor is widely advocated today. There are, perhaps, good reasons for this, in that annual elections would be costly and would risk encouraging even greater short-termism in politics than is currently the case. On the other hand, as the Streater quotation suggests, more frequent elections would ensure that MPs have to live under the laws they make and would strengthen the sense of their accountability to their constituents. It would also ensure that whatever is decided in the next few months, my son wouldn't have to wait another five years before being able to express his political voice in a General Election.