Reform
In the 19th century, there were moves toward reform, which broadly meant ending the over-representation of boroughs with few electors. This political movement had a major success in the Reform Act 1832, which disfranchised the 57 rotten boroughs listed below and redistributed representation in Parliament to new major population centres and to places with significant industries.
|
|
The Ballot Act of 1872 introduced the secret ballot, which greatly hindered patrons from controlling elections by preventing them from knowing how an elector had voted. At the same time, the practice of paying or entertaining voters ("treating") was outlawed, and election expenses fell dramatically.
Read more about this topic: Rotten And Pocket Boroughs
Famous quotes containing the word reform:
“When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“...feminism differs from reform of any kind, even franchise reform. Feminists, I should say, are not reformers at all, but rather intellectual biologists and psychologists.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“... the opportunity offered by life to women is far in excess of any offered to men. To be the inspiration is more than to be the tool. To create the world, a greater thing than to reform it.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)