Cornwall there were only one thousand voters.
Of the forty-two seats possessed by that section of the country twenty
were controlled by seven peers, twenty-one were similarly controlled
by eleven commoners, and but one was filled by free election. In 1780
it was asserted by the Duke of Richmond that a clear majority of the
House of Commons was returned by six thousand persons. Bribery and
other forms of corruption were so common that only the most shameless
instances attracted public attention. Not merely votes, but seats,
were bought and sold openly, and it was a matter of general
understanding that L5,000 to L7,000 was the amount which a political
aspirant might expect to be obliged to pay a borough-monger for
bringing about his election. Seats were not infrequently advertised
for sale in the public prints, and even for hire for a term of
years.[111]

[Footnote 111: The monumental treatise on the House
of Commons prior to 1832 is E. Porritt, The
Unreformed House of Commons: Parliamentary
Representation before 1832, 2 vols. (2d ed.,
Cambridge, 1909). On the prevalence of corruption
see May and Holland, Constitutional History of
England, I., 224-238, 254-262.]

II. PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, 1832-1885

*85. Demand for Reform Prior to 1832.*--Active demand for a reformation
of the conditions that have been described antedated the nineteenth
century. As early as 1690, indeed, John Locke denounced the
absurdities of the prevailing electoral system,[112] although at the
time they were inconsiderable in comparison with what they became by
1832; and during the second half of the eighteenth century a (p. 081)
number of interesting reform proposals--notably that of the elder Pitt
in 1766, that of Wilkes in 1776, and that of the younger Pitt in
1785--were widely though fruitlessly discussed. In 1780 a group of
public-spirited men established a Society for Constitutional
Information which during the ensuing decade carried on actively a
propaganda in behalf of parliamentary regeneration, and at a meeting
under the auspices of this organization and presided over by Charles
James Fox a programme was drawn up insisting upon innovations no less
sweeping than the establishment of manhood suffrage, the creation of
equal electoral districts, the payment of members, the abolition of
property qualific