parliamentary reform

parliamentary reform, in the sense of the refashioning of the electoral system, first became a major issue in the second half of the 18th century. Previously critics of the political system had concentrated on means of eliminating corruption among MPs and office holders. A different emphasis first appeared in the campaign during the 1760s for more regular elections, culminating in the Octennial Act. Parliamentary reform on a larger scale first became an issue following the successful campaigns for free trade and legislative independence. Detailed proposals were drawn up by the Volunteer Convention at Dungannon in September 1783 and by the National Convention in November, and by the Whigs in 1793–4. Though differing in detail they shared the same objective of strengthening the electoral power of the small property owner. The franchise was to be made more uniform, while retaining a property qualification; proposals to increase the boundaries of small boroughs, and, in the case of the Whig plan, to give an extra parliamentary seat to each county and to the cities of Dublin and Cork, would have increased the proportion of open to closed constituencies. The Dungannon Convention also advocated the secret ballot. It was only the United Irishmen who moved beyond such limited schemes to real (if still gender‐bound) democracy: their plan, finalized in early 1794, called for universal manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts, and the secret ballot.

The Act of Union, though opposed by most patriots and radicals, was in fact a major measure of reform, at a stroke reducing the representatives for closed constituencies from more than two‐thirds to less than one‐third of Irish members. O'Connell's wholehearted participation in the reform agitation of the years before 1832 reflects both his own position as a figure within British as well as Irish radicalism and his perception, borne out by events, that British reforms would not necessarily be replicated in Ireland. Subsequent extensions to the Irish franchise, in 1867, 1885, and 1918, were more closely in parallel with changes in the English and Welsh and the Scottish electorate, and the cause of reform attracted correspondingly less interest from Irish politicians.