BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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Given the tendency of political reforms to achieve their impact
on the society often a decade or two following enactment, it is hardly
surprising that the full weight of early and mid-Victorian innovations
only came to be felt in their entirety in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century.
This period was to be the battleground over which
the war for popular democracy was waged.
It was during this time that
the aristocracy was forced to yield significant ground within one of
its most prized sanctuaries, the parliamentary institutions of
government.
A growing number of professionals, wealthy industrialists,
and their descendants were admitted into the House of Commons, the
Cabinet, and even the House of Lords. 6
The march toward democracy was evident in the electoral reforms
of the 1880's: the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, the expansion of the
franchise (1884), and the readjustment of electoral districts (1885).
These acts succeeded, respectively, in eliminating the worst aspects of
corruption associated with election campaigns, notably treating and
excessive expenditure; in extending voting privileges to the counties
to include most male agricultural workers; and in modifying voting
6
W.L. Guttsman, "Aristocracy and the Middle Class in the
British Political Elite 1886-1916," The British Journal of Sociology
vol. 5, no. 1 (March 1954), pp. 20-21, 23-24. J.P. Cornford, "The
Parliamentary Foundations of the Hotel Cecil," in Ideas and
Institutions of Victorian Britain, pp. 268-69, 277, 282-83, 289, 305.
Harold Perkin,"Who Runs Britain? Elites in British Society since
1880," The Structured Crowd (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981), pp. 159­
61. Ralph E. Pumphey, "The Introduction of Industrialists into the
British Peerage: A Study in Adaption of a Social Institution," American
Historical Review vol. 60, no. 1 (October 1959), pp. 8-14. Gerald
Macmillan, Honours for Sale (London: Richards Press, 1954), pp. 220,
244. H.J. Hanham, "The Sale of Honours in Late Victorian England,"
Victorian Studies vol. 3, no. 3 (March 1960), pp. 277-78.