ation in boroughs
and counties alike; and persons occupying a house by virtue of office
or employment were to be deemed "occupiers" for the purpose of the
act. The measure doubled the county electorate and increased the total
electorate by some 2,000,000, or approximately forty per cent. Its
most important effect was to enfranchise the workingman in the
country, as the act of 1867 had enfranchised the workingman in the
town.

*90. The Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885.*--In 1885, the two great
parties co-operating, there was passed the Redistribution of Seats Act
which had been promised. Now for the first time in English history
attempt was made to apportion representation in the House of Commons
in something like strict accordance with population densities. In the
first place, the total number of members was increased from 658[121]
to 670, and of the number 103 were allotted to Ireland, 72 to
Scotland, and 495 to England and Wales. In the next place, the method
by which former redistributions had been accomplished, i.e.,
transferring seats more or less arbitrarily from flagrantly
over-represented boroughs to more populous boroughs and counties, was
replaced by a method based upon the principle of equal electoral
constituencies, each returning one member. In theory a constituency
was made to comprise 50,000 people. Boroughs containing fewer than
15,000 inhabitants were disfranchised as boroughs, becoming for
electorial purposes portions of the counties in which they were
situated. Boroughs of between 15,000 and 50,000 inhabitants were
allowed to retain, or if previously unrepresented were given, one
member each. Those of between 50,000 and 165,000 were given two
members, and those of more than 165,000 three, with one in addition
for every additional 50,000 people. The same general principle was
followed in the counties. Thus the city of Liverpool, which prior to
1885 sent three members to Parliament, fell into nine distinct
constituencies, each returning one member, and the great northern
county of Lancashire, which since 1867 had been divided into four
portions each returning two members, was now split into twenty-three
divisions with one member each. The boroughs which prior to 1885
elected two members, and at the redistribution retained that number,
remained single constituencies for the election of those two members.
Of these boroughs there are to-day twenty-three. They, together (p. 086)
with the city of Londo