y, and heartily dislike any
notion of radical change, but the abuses were too obvious to prevent
reform.

Whatever the size of the county it returned two members elected by
freeholders, and the cost of a county election was enormous. Some of the
boroughs, especially in Cornwall, were tiny villages. Eighteen members were
returned from such boroughs in that part of Cornwall which now returns one
member for the Liskeard Division. The fields of Old Sarum belonged to seven
electors and returned two members. As there was no habitation whatever in
this "borough" of Old Sarum, a tent was put up for the convenience of the
returning officer at election times. No general law decided the borough
franchise. Local custom and various political and personal considerations
settled who should vote for members of Parliament. Places like Westminster
and Preston had practically manhood suffrage. In most of the "corporation
boroughs" the franchise was restricted exclusively to freemen of the
borough, and to the self-elected non-resident persons who composed the
governing body before the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835. A small number
of rich and powerful men really worked nearly all the elections. Seats were
openly bought and sold, and a candidate had either to find a patron who
would provide him with a seat, or, failing a patron, to purchase a seat
himself. Fox first entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Midhurst,
and Sir George Trevelyan has described how it took place. Midhurst was
selected by the father of Charles James Fox as "the most comfortable of
constituencies from the point of view of a representative; for the right of
election rested in a few small holdings, on which no human being resided,
distinguished among the pastures and the stubble that surrounded them by a
large stone set up on end in the middle of each portion. These burbage
tenures, as they were called, had all been bought up by a single
proprietor, Viscount Montagu, who when an election was in prospect,
assigned a few of them to his servants, with instructions to nominate the
members and then make back the property to their employer. This ceremony
was performed in March, 1768, and the steward of the estate, who acted as
the returning officer, declared that Charles James Fox had been duly chosen
as one of the burgesses for Midhurst, at a time when that young gentleman
was still amusing himself in Italy."

Three years earlier Burke had entered Parliament as a no