Parliamentary Reform
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the war. Every act of Government, good or bad, was torn to pieces and called ‘infamous’ by the Whigs, some of whom sought for popularity by writing in the newspapers, and even by appealing to the passions of the London mob. That mob more than once broke loose and enjoyed some highly exciting riots, in suppressing which King George showed great personal courage. Cry for reform of House of Commons.One of the cries raised at this time, both in and outside Parliament, was for a better representation of the people of Britain in the House of Commons. It was really a very reasonable cry, for the existing system was absurd.
The ‘Rotten Boroughs’.By that system each county sent two members to Parliament whatever its population. And in the counties only actual owners of land could vote at elections. You might be enormously rich and have a long lease of an enormous estate; but unless you owned land you had no vote. Then the boroughs, which also sent two members each, were still the same towns which had sent members to the Tudor Parliaments. From many of these towns all trade, riches and importance had long departed, and some boroughs had hardly any inhabitants at all! Side by side with these were great cities grown and growing up, which sent no members to Parliament. Now, if the Tories had been wise, they would have taken up this question, and made a proper and moderate ‘reform’ of the House of Commons. The Whigs, who called themselves ‘champions of the people’, could hardly with decency have opposed it. William Pitt the younger.But when William Pitt the younger, son of the great Minister of the Seven Years’ War, took up the question in 1785, he could get very little support from his own party. So this question fell into