Chartist Movement.*--The act of 1832 possessed none of the
elements of finality. Its authors were in general content, but with
the lapse of time it was made increasingly manifest that the nation
was not. Political power was still confined to the magnates of the
kingdom, the townsfolk who were able to pay a L10 annual rental, and
the well-to-do copyholders and leaseholders of rural districts. Whigs
and Tories of influence alike insisted that further innovation could
not be contemplated, but the radicals and the laboring masses insisted
no less resolutely that the reformation which had been begun should be
carried to its logical conclusion. The demands upon which emphasis was
especially placed were gathered up in the "six points" of the People's
Charter, promulgated in final form May 8, 1838. The six points were:
(1) universal suffrage for males over twenty-one years of age, (p. 083)
(2) equal electoral districts, (3) voting by secret ballot, (4) annual
sessions of Parliament, (5) the abolition of property qualifications
for members of the House of Commons, and (6) payment of members. The
barest enumeration of these demands is sufficient to reveal the
political backwardness of the England of three-quarters of a century
ago. Not only was the suffrage still severely restricted and the basis
of representation antiquated and unfair; voting was oral and public,
and only men who were qualified by the possession of property were
eligible for election.[117]

[Footnote 117: Rose, Rise and Growth of Democracy,
Chaps. 6-8; Kent, The English Radicals, Chap. 3;
and R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist
Movement, 1837-1854 (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1894).]

*88. The Representation of the People Act of 1867.*--After a decade of
spectacular propaganda Chartism collapsed, without having attained
tangible results. None the less, the day was not long postponed when
the forces of reform, sobered and led by practical statesmen, were
enabled to realize one after another of their fundamental purposes. In
1858 the second Derby government acquiesced in the enactment of a
measure by which all property qualifications hitherto required of
English, Welsh, and Irish members were abolished,[118] and after 1860
projects for franchise extension were considered with increasing
seriousness. In 1867 the third Derby government, whose guiding spirit
was Disraeli, carried a bill provid