BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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II
The best means available for evaluating the ability of the
Primrose League to meet the challenge of the Liberal caucus is by
examining by means of a computer the strength of the League's
membership as manifest in the 1888 and 1899 Rolls of Habitations and
three local cases studies of membership rosters.
The figures provided
cannot serve as an exact measurement or determination of the League 1 s
effectiveness since membership need not be equated with political
participation or influence.
Nevertheless, the numbers do indicate the
breadth and scale of the organization which provided the basis for an
auxiliary army dedicated to the advancement of the Conservative cause.
The statistics presented in this chapter derive from the Rolls
of Habitations and local registers and, unfortunately, have been based
largely on incomplete sources.
In the case of the most comprehensive
source available, the 1888 Roll of Habitations, for example, there is
no information regarding the membership of 29 percent of the
Habitations listed.
Some omissions or errors may also have occurred in
the process of entering the 1888 and 1899 Rolls onto a computer system.
The task was long and tedious, requiring many hours of compilation.
Wherever possible these deficiencies have been detected and corrected
by checking for consistency with the Rolls.
Even so the figures cited
in this chapter should be relied on more as indicators of general
trends rather than exact measurements of precise events.
Despite these
obvious limitations, it is hoped that by examining the imperfect data