Excellent as was the Reform Bill of 1832 (S582), it did not go far
enough. There was also great need of municipal reform, since in many
cities the taxpayers had no voice in the management of local affairs,
and the city officers sometimes spent the income of large charitable
funds in feasting and merrimaking while the poor got little or
nothing.
A law was passed (1835) giving taxpayers in cities (except London)
control of municipal elections. By a subsequent amendment, the ballot
in such cases was extended to women,[2] and for the first time perhaps
in modern history partial woman suffrage was formally granted by
supreme legislative act. A number of years later the political
restrictions imposed on the Jews were removed.
[2] Woman suffrage in municipal elections was granted to single women
and widows (householders) in 1869. In 1870 an act was passed enabling
them to vote at schoolboard elections, and also to become members of
such boards. By act of 1894 women were made eligible to sit and vote
in district and parish councils (or local-government elections).
There was a considerable number of Jews in London and in other large
cities who were men of wealth and influence. They were entitled to
vote and hold municipal office, but they were debarred from election
to Parliament by a law which required them to make oath "on the faith
of a Christian." The law was now so modified (1859) that a very
prominent Jew, Baron Rothschild, took his seat in Parliament. Finally
the Oaths Act (1888) abolished all religious tests in Parliament.
600. Second and Third Reform Acts, 1867, 1884; County and Parish
Councils (1884, 1894).
In 1867 the pressure of public opinion moved Mr. Disraeli (later Lord
Beaconsfield), a member of Lord Derby's Conservative Cabinet (S479),
to bring in a second Reform Bill (S582), which became law. This bill
provided "household suffrage." It gave the right to vote to all male
householders in the English parliamentary boroughs (that is, towns
having the right to elect one or more members to Parliament), who paid
a tax for the support of the poor, and to all lodgers paying a rental
of 10 pounds yearly; it also increased the number of voters among
small property holders in counties.[1]
[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p.xxvi,
S31. Lord Derby held the office, but Mr. Disraeli was really Prime
Minister.
There still remained, however, a large class in the country districts
for whom nothing had been done. The men employed by the farmers to
till the soil were wretchedly poor and deplorably ignorant. Joseph
Arch, a Warwickshire farm laborer, who had been educated by hunger and
toil, succeeded in establishing a national union among men of his
class (1872). In 1884 Mr. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister,
secured the ballot for agricultural laborers by the passage of the
third Reform Act, which gave all residents of counties throughout the
United Kingdom the right to vote on the same liberal conditions as the
residents of the towns.
It is estimated that this last law added about two and a half millions
of voters; this gave one voter to every six persons of the total
population, whereas, before the passing of the first Reform Bill in
1832, thre was not over one in fifty. When the new or so-called
"People's Parliament" convened (1886), Joseph Arch and several other
candidates took their seats in the House of Commons as representatives
of classes of the population who, up to that date, had no voice in the
legislation of the country.
The next step may bring universal "manhood suffrage." The County
Council and Parish Council acts (1888, 1894) greatly extended the
power of the people in all matters of local government, so that now
every village in England controls its own affairs.
601. Compulsory Church Rates abolished; Disestablishment in Ireland
(1869).
While these great reforms were taking place with respect to elections,
others of great importance were also being effected. From its origin
in 1549 the established Protestant Church of England (S362) had
compelled persons of all religious beliefs to pay rates or taxes for
the maintenance of the Established Cuhrch in the parish where they
resided. Methodists, Baptists, and other Dissenters (SS472, 496, 507)
objected to this law as unjust, since, in addition to the expense of
supporting their own form of worship, they were obliged to contribute
toward maintaining one with which they had no sympathy. So great had
the opposition become to paying these "church rates," that in over
fifteen hundred parishes in England (1859) the authorities could not
collect them. After long debate Mr. Gladstone carried through a bill
(1868) which abolished this mode of taxation and made the payment of
these rates purely voluntary.[1]
[1] Church rates were levied on all occupiers of land or houses within
the parish. The Church of England is now supported by a tax on
landowners, by its endowments, and by voluntary gifts.
A similar act of justice was soon after granted to Ireland (1869).[2]
At the time of the union of the two countries in 1800 (S562), the
maintenance of the Protestant Episcopal Church continued to remain
obligatory upon the Irish people, although only a small part of them
were of that faith. Mr. Gladstone, now Liberal Prime Minister,
succeeded in getting Parliament to enact a law which disestablished
this branch of the National Church and left all religious
denominations in Ireland to the voluntary support of those who
belonged to them. Henceforth the English Protestants residing in that
country could no longer claim the privilege of worshiping God at the
expense of his Roman Catholic neighbor.
[2] The Disestablishment Bill was passed in 1869 and took effect in
1871.