Reform is a comprehensive name for those changes in the law by which the House of Commons has been made a truly representative body. In the 18th century only freeholders voted in English county elections; in many boroughs the franchise was restricted to members of the corporation; boroughs of this class were usually under the influence of the crown or of some wealthy individual who regarded them as a part of his property. In 1745 Sir F. Dashwood moved an amendment to the address, claiming for the people the right to be freely and fairly represented; in 1766 Lord Chatham took up the cause of Reform; Wilkes proposed an excellent scheme of redistribution in 1776; in 1780 the Duke of Richmond proposed annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and equal electoral districts; but his plan met with no support. Pitt entered public life as an avowed reformer, and in 1785 he introduced a measure of redistribution; the part of his scheme most open to objection was the proposal to compensate owners of rotten boroughs. His bill was rejected, and he dropped the subject. The king was opposed to change, and in the public mind reform came to be identified with the revolutionary opinions which were beginning to prevail in France. Fox and Grey kept alive the demand for a wider franchise and a better distribution of power; and after the lapse of years the Whig friends of reform found an able leader in Lord J. Russell. His first motion on the subject was proposed in 1820, and in 1830 he accepted office under Lord Grey. A Reform Bill was brought in, and the second reading was carried by a majority of one. A subsequent defeat in committee compelled the government to dissolve. The country declared unmistakably for Lord Grey; his second Reform Bill was passed in the Commons by a large majority. It was rejected by the Lords, and the same fate would have befallen a third bill introduced in 1832, but the resistance of the Lords was overcome by the threat to create as many new peers as might be necessary to pass the bill. After something like a century of discussion the first Reform Act received the royal assent. The greater part of the labouring classes were still unenfranchised; the Radical reformers were still unsatisfied; but the Whigs and Tories were unwilling to disturb the settlement of 1832. Agitation was stimulated by the so called People's Charter put forth in 1838; but it was not till 1852 that Lord J. Russell reopened the question of Reform. Successive governments continued to bring in abortive schemes, until at last in 1867 Lord Derby and Mr Disraeli succeeded in passing the act by which household and lodger franchises were extended to the boroughs. In 1884 Mr Gladstone proposed to assimilate the franchise in counties to that which had been given to the boroughs; but the Lords refused to pass any bill for extending the franchise until the details of the government scheme of redistribution were before them. The action of the Lords led to considerable agitation in the autumn recess. The bill was re-introduced in an autumn session; and the question at issue between the two Houses was settled by a very remarkable act of compromise. The government agreed not only to communicate their plan of redistribution to the leaders of the opposition, but to settle the details by mutual arrangement; Lord Salisbury and Sir S. Northcote attended meetings of the cabinet, and conferred with ministers for that purpose. The results of this conference were embodied in a series of bills which were passed into law before the general election of 1885. Two points in the measures of 1884-85 have been somewhat severely criticised—the adoption of single-member districts, a mode of distribution which suppresses the opinions of all local minorities (see REPRESENTATION), and the addition of twelve members to the House of Commons, which was already too large a body for deliberative purposes.
At the end of the reign of George III. there were, in a population of 22,000,000, only 440,000 voters. The Reform Bill of 1832 added less than 500,000 voters to the electorate; the reform of 1867-68 increased the electorate from 1,136,000 to 2,448,000. At the passing of the measures of 1884-85 the electorate had by natural growth risen to about 3,000,000; and the Act of 1884 added at once about 2,000,000 more to the list of voters. Of the new electors, about 1,300,000 were in England and Wales, 200,000 in Scotland, and 400,000 in Ireland.
See the articles PARLIAMENT, CHARTISM, GLADSTONE, RUSSELL (EARL); May's Constitutional History; and the speeches of Gladstone, Bright, Disraeli, &c.