This year marks the 190th anniversary of the 1835 general election and the 160th anniversary of the 1865 general election. Our assistant editor Dr Kathryn Rix looks at some of the ways in which the electoral system had evolved in the thirty years between them.

The 1835 and 1865 general elections both took place under the electoral system established by the 1832 Reform Act, with 1865 being the last general election before the 1867 Reform Act made significant changes to the representative system. There were, however, many ways in which electioneering had evolved in the thirty years which separated them.

These two elections happened in rather different circumstances. The 1865 contest – one of five July general elections during the period between 1832 and 1867 – took place because the Parliament elected in 1859 was approaching the end of its maximum seven year term. The elderly Viscount Palmerston and the Liberals retained office after slightly increasing their majority, although Palmerston’s premiership ended with his death in October 1865, meaning that it was Earl Russell who was prime minister when the new Parliament met for the first time in February 1866.

In contrast the general election of 1835 – which took place across January and February and was one of only two winter elections in this period – had been called by a minority Conservative government. Sir Robert Peel had taken office in December 1834 at the end of a turbulent year that had seen the resignation of four Cabinet ministers from Earl Grey’s Whig government over proposals to reform the Anglican Church in Ireland, including the future Conservative prime minister Edward Smith Stanley (later Lord Derby). This had precipitated Grey’s resignation in July 1834. He was succeeded as Whig prime minister by Viscount Melbourne. In November 1834, however, King William IV dismissed Melbourne’s ministry, the last time in British history that a monarch used their power to remove a government.

Peel, who sought to present a moderate reforming Conservatism in his ‘Tamworth manifesto’, improved his party’s position at the 1835 election, and scuppered Stanley’s hopes of forming his own ‘third’ or ‘centre’ party, the so-called ‘Derby dilly’. However, the Conservatives failed to secure a majority of seats. Although some members of the ‘Derby dilly’ gave him their support in the division lobby, Peel was forced to resign in April 1835 after a series of Commons defeats, with Melbourne returning to lead another Whig ministry.

As this summary suggests, one difference between the 1835 and 1865 elections was the role played by party. Party labels were much less clear-cut and party affiliation far more fluid in 1835 than in 1865, which had an impact on electioneering and the ways in which candidates presented themselves and their political message. Statistics compiled by our research fellow Dr Martin Spychal indicate the range of party labels used by non-Conservative MPs in 1835, including Whigs, Reformers, Radicals, moderate Whigs, moderate Reformers and Repealers. In contrast, in 1865 the vast majority of non-Conservative MPs were listed as Liberals.

Alongside this, the presence of the ‘Derby dilly’ and other ‘independent’ MPs who were willing to give Peel’s minority government ‘a fair trial’ meant that the party system in operation in 1835 looked rather different from the more obvious Liberal/Conservative distinctions in 1865. In an article published in February 1835, The Examiner analysed the likely voting patterns of 71 MPs it considered to be ‘doubtful men’ when it came to their party affiliation. However, party allegiances were by no means set in stone in 1865. There were around 50 MPs – mainly Conservatives wishing to indicate their moderate views and willingness to give general support to Palmerston’s ministry – who termed themselves ‘Liberal Conservatives’. Meanwhile, not all Liberals could be relied upon to support their party leaders, as the ‘Adullamite’ rebellion against the Russell ministry’s 1866 reform bill made plain.

The evolving complexities of party were not the only ways in which the 1835 and 1865 contests differed. Although no major Reform Act was passed until 1867, other legislation had altered the framework of electioneering. At both contests, 658 MPs were elected, but the constituencies for which they were chosen were not identical. In 1835 Sudbury and St Albans each returned two MPs. However, persistent corruption in these constituencies meant they were stripped of their representation in 1844 and 1852 respectively.

Their four seats were redistributed in 1861. One went to the new borough of Birkenhead, whose voters chose the shipbuilder John Laird as MP at a by-election that year, and re-elected him in 1865. There was also a by-election in 1861 to select a new third MP for the previously double-member constituency of South Lancashire. Voters for the final two new seats had to wait until the 1865 election, when the double-member West Riding of Yorkshire was split into two double-member constituencies. Lancashire South’s third seat took on an added significance in 1865 when it was won by William Gladstone, then Liberal chancellor of the exchequer, who needed a new berth after being rejected by Oxford University’s voters.

Other reforms had a nationwide impact. In 1835 polling in most constituencies lasted two days, the exception being Irish counties where the polls could be kept open for up to five days. For borough constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales, 1835 was the last general election at which two day polls took place. Legislation later that year cut the length of the poll in these seats to just one day.

It was hoped that this would help to curb the expense and corruption of elections, by reducing the window of opportunity for bribery, treating, intimidation and disorder. It had not been uncommon for electors to delay casting their votes until the second day of polling, in the hopes of securing larger bribes as the close of the contest approached. Praising the shift to a one day poll, the Radical MP Richard Potter noted that ‘the mischief under the old system was generally done in the night’. Successive reforms – for Irish boroughs in 1847, English, Scottish and Welsh counties in 1853, and Irish counties in 1850 and 1862 – meant that at the 1865 election, the only constituency where the poll was allowed to last for two days was Orkney and Shetland, although in the event its Liberal MP was re-elected unopposed.

The most significant corrupt practices legislation in the 1832-68 period was the 1854 Corrupt Practices Prevention Act, which provided detailed definitions for the existing offences of bribery and treating and created the new offence of ‘undue influence’ or intimidation. Its stipulation that payments for ‘chairing’ victorious candidates after the poll would be considered illegal had the effect of curbing one of the most colourful aspects of election ritual. Chairings were relatively common in 1835, as at Swansea, where the newly re-elected MP John Vivian was carried through the town by sixteen men ‘with shirts decorated in blue and yellow’, in a chair bearing the slogan ‘Vivian and independence’, accompanied by a procession with a band of music. Although some MPs took part in informal victory processions in 1865, we have not yet found any examples of the traditional chairing ceremony.

When it came to the prevalence of bribery, however, 1835 and 1865 had much in common. In terms of the number of successful election petitions, which unseated MPs for electoral malpractice, the latter contest was in fact worse than its predecessor. In 1835 there were 12 cases in which the election result was overturned, while in 1865 there were 16. The most shocking examples of corruption in 1865 included Lancaster, where an astounding 64% of voters took or gave a bribe, and Totnes, where as much as £200 was offered for a single vote. These two boroughs, together with Great Yarmouth and Reigate, suffered the same fate as St Albans and Sudbury, being disfranchised for corruption under a special clause in the 1867 Reform Act.

KR

For more on changes in electioneering during the nineteenth century, see Dr Philip Salmon’s article on developments in transport to the poll and Dr Kathryn Rix’s article on elections under the secret ballot.