Note 83 — Chapter VII

By the Reform Bill of 1867 all male householders in boroughs were enfranchised, and all male lodgers who paid £10 a year for unfurnished rooms. The town workman was enfranchised by this Act as the middle-class man had been enfranchised by the Act of 1832, and the electorate was increased from about 100,000 to 2,000,000. An amendment that women should not be excluded from the franchise was moved by John Stuart Mill, and defeated. Some redistribution of seats took place under the Act of 1867, eleven boroughs were disfranchised, thirty-five with less than 10,000 inhabitants were made single-member constituencies, and additional representation was given to Chelsea, Hackney, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Glasgow, Birmingham, Dundee, and Merthyr. "Thus was Household Suffrage brought in in the boroughs, and a great step was made towards democracy, for it was plain that the middle-class county constituencies could not last very much longer now that all workmen who happened to live in boroughs had their votes."[83]