BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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implementation until January, 1886 by which time the Redistribution
bill was expected to become law.
The compact further stipulated
several conditions which were particularly favorable to the Tories.6
Constituencies were to be predominantly single-member
districts.
Only the City of London, the Universities, and twenty-three
mid-sized cities were granted more than one representative. The
agreement also provided for the division of county boundaries along the
lines of their existing rural
and urban concentrations of population.
Both the preponderance of single-member districts and the separation of
rural and urban communities were advantageous to Conservatives. These
provisions helped to ensure that in the metropolitan regions the
propertied middle and upper class voters were not dominated by the
interests of working class electors.
Similarly in the rural areas Tory
interests were protected by the allocation of separate districts for
borough or urban centers, generally associated with Liberal,
cosmopolitan voters, from farming communities, traditionally regarded
as centers of Conservative influence.7
The above provisions in large measure ensured that the
Redistribution settlement reached between Salisbury and Gladstone would
weigh quite substantially in favor of the Tories.
The agreement,
therefore, was ample compensation for any minimal loss incurred by the
5
For a summary of the political maneuvers underlying the
settlement of the 1885 Redistribution Act, see Marsh, The Discipline of
Popular Government, pp. 36-45.
7
Ibid., pp. 37-38, 40, 43-44. James Cornford, "The
Transformation of Conservatism in the Late Nineteenth Century," The
Victorian Revolution, ed. Peter Stansky (New York: New Viewpoints,
1973), p. 310.