BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

country, albeit with the tacit support of the middle class which, for
the moment at least, was largely restricted in its direct political
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influence to extra-parliamentary pressure groups^
and therefore found
it necessary to accept the dictates of reform or restraint imposed from
above.
The willingness on the part of the landed elites to incorporate
some wealthy industrial magnates and socially prominent individuals
within and around its ranks also served to bolster and prolong its
influence well
into the nineteenth century at a time when the economic
predominance of the middle class hinted it was the rightful heir to the
reins of power.4
Even the Ballot Act of 1872, which provided for
secret voting and by implication freedom from undue influence at the
polls, failed to have a significant effect on the existing patterns of
deferential behavior for at least a decade following its passage.5
3 D.A. Hamer, The Politics of Electoral Pressure (Hassocks:
Harvester Press, 1977), pp. vii, 3-4, 6.
4
Guttsman, The British Political Elite, pp. 60, 77-78, 80,
82-84, 89-90. Idem, "Social Stratification and Political Elite," The
British Journal of Sociology vol. 11, no. 2 (June 1960), pp. 142-43,
147. T.H. Hollingsworth, "The Demography of the British Peerage,"
Population Studies Supplement to Part II, vol. 18, no. 2 (1964-65), pp.
9-10. David Thomas, "The Social Origins of Marriage Partners of the
British Peerage in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," Population
Studies vol. 26, no. 1 (March 1972), pp. 102-09. C.B. Otley, "The
Social Origins of British Army Officers," The Sociological Review New
Series, vol. 18, no. 2 (July 1970), pp. 215-16, 236.
5 D.C. Moore, "Political Morality in Mid-Nineteenth Century
England: Concepts, Norms, Violations," Victoria! Studies vol. 13, no. 1
(September, 1969), pp. 31-32, 34-35. Idem, "Social Structure,
Political Structure, and Public Opinion in Mid-Victorian England" in
Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain, ed. Robert Robson (London:
G. Bell and Sons, 1967), pp. 56-57.