Two Parliaments Escape Reform 231
such as Manchester. Since copyhold, over the centuries, had in effect become a
form of ownership of land, he would add the 40- shilling copyholders to the
40- shilling freeholders as voters in the counties. He would also enfranchise certain
long leaseholders. Since in a few boroughs there were propertyless persons who
had the voting right, and who, paradoxically, would lose it by reform (as they did in
1832), Pitt proposed to indemnify these “potwallopers” to the extent of £1,000,000.
Their vote was regarded as a property right.
Pitt was weakened, however, not only by the resistance of those who opposed
any alteration of Parliament in principle, but by the failure of the new industrial-
ists, in the unrepresented Midland towns, to lend him enough support. Pitt at this
same time was working to equalize the tariff duties between England and Ireland.
He was therefore unpopular in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Sheffield,
which abstained from petitioning for passage of his reform bill. This was signifi-
cant, at a time when Manchester got up a petition with 55,000 signatures against
tariff concessions to Ireland. Pitt then gave up his tariff plans. It thus seemed that
Burke was right when he said that places sending no members to Parliament were
nevertheless “represented,” and had their interests carefully watched over. Man-
chester, with no members in Parliament, could sway the tariff policy of England
and profoundly influence its relations with Ireland, just as Yorkshire, which had
few members, and where no election was contested between 1760 and 1800, con-
tinued to enjoy a favored position under the land tax.
Pitt’s reform bill of 1785 may thus be thought of, somewhat like the Maupeou
reforms in France, as the project of an enlightened government acting in the long-
run interests of the country, rather than as a measure demanded by powerful forces
in society at large. Like its predecessors, it failed to pass, by 248 against 174.
Pitt in 1785 was repudiated on the two measures on which he set most store,
the reform of Parliament and the reform of commercial relations with Ireland. He
could at this point either resign, or seek a coalition with Fox or North, or remain
in office by depending on the King. There was no constitutional requirement that
he resign, and he had a kind of personal feud with Fox. He remained Prime Min-
ister by cooperating with the King. He never again brought up the subject of par-
liamentary reform, and remained content with such fiscal or administrative im-
provements as he could persuade the King to accept.
George III thus won out in the long constitutional crisis that had been going on
for twenty years. If he did not rule personally, he ruled through Pitt, letting him
have his high principles and ideas, and persuading him when necessary to defer or
modify their application. Constitutional change came to a standstill until 1832.
King and Parliament remained “separated” and “balanced,” and in effect made to
work together by “influence.” The aristocracy continued to hold forth in Parlia-
ment, and to accept the favors of the crown. As for the “people,” some cared more
for other things than the vote, like the industrialists of the Midlands, or the per-
fervid anti- Catholics of London. Others continued to hold meetings, form societ-
ies, and write pamphlets on reform of the representation. They were soon to be
stirred up again during the French Revolution.
Here, as in Ireland, an especial interest attaches to the conservative arguments
against the reform bills, because it was at this time that Edmund Burke codified