explained that the
Government did not {142} propose to fill up all these vacancies, being
of opinion that the House was already rather overflowing in its numbers
and had a good deal too many members for the proper discharge of its
business.

[Sidenote: 1831--The principles of the Reform Bill]

Some of the vacant seats were, however, to be assigned to the cities
and towns which were then actually unrepresented in the House of
Commons. Seven of these towns were to have two representatives each,
and twenty smaller but still goodly towns were to have one
representative each. Even at this day it may still come as a matter of
surprise to some readers to learn that the seven towns which in 1831
were wholly unrepresented, and to which the Bill proposed to give two
members each, were Manchester, which was to include Salford;
Birmingham, Leeds, Greenwich, Wolverhampton, Sheffield, and Sunderland.
The Government proposed to give eight additional members to the
metropolis itself--that is to say, two members each to the Tower
Hamlets, Holborn, Finsbury, and Lambeth. The three Ridings of
Yorkshire were to have two members each, and twenty-six counties
already represented, and in each of which there were more than 150,000
inhabitants, were each to have two additional members. It is not
necessary to go more fully into the details of the scheme which Lord
John Russell expounded elaborately to the House of Commons.

In Ireland and in Scotland there were some slight differences as to the
scale of the qualification from those that were proposed for England;
but in the three countries the principle was the same, and the right to
vote was associated with a certain occupation of land or payment of
household rating, and new constituencies were created where towns,
unrepresented before, had grown up into recognized importance. By the
changes that the Bill proposed to make no less than half a million of
new voters were to be created throughout Great Britain and Ireland.
For the purpose of diminishing the enormous expense of elections it was
proposed that the poll should be taken at the same time in separate
districts, so that no voter should have to travel more than fifteen
miles in order to record his vote, and {143} that the time over which
an election contest could be spread should be greatly reduced, and
reduced in proportion to the size of the constituency. It is as well
to say at once that that part of the Reform Bill which aimed