Never was a revolution effected with more economy in change. The right ...

Never was a revolution effected with more economy in change. The right of the magnate to appoint the representatives of the lesser boroughs had gone: his influence, if he chose to exercise it with discretion and decorum, was hardly impaired, and it soon appeared that if there was less rioting and less bribery at an election, there was still much bribery, and more intimidation, and election day was still a carnival which usually ended in a fight.

Open voting kept the tenant under his landlord's eye; the tradesman under his customer's; and in every county the fifty-pound tenants at will, prudently enfranchised by a Tory amendment, made a solid block of dependable voters. The country was satisfied: even the Radicals accepted the Reform Bill as a fair instalment of their demands without pressing to know when the other instalments-the ballot, one man one vote, one vote one value-would be paid The 1860 householder in town was in effect a man with £150 a year and upward: without exaggerating it, as the Tories were inclined to do, one must still remember that Reform did disfranchise a large number of working men.

Boroughs of zoo and 300 voters were still common: Thetford had 146. In very general terms one might say that from 1832 to 1867 one man in six had a vote, after 1867 one in three. In the same period over fifty returns were set aside for malpractices.

Electorate is a L.V. word: constituency which appeared (colloquially) for the first time in 1830/1 originally meant the whole body of electors: then, a particular bad.