Why were the Liberals defeated in the general election of 1874?

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Jennifer Sanders

Why were the Liberals defeated in the general election of 1874?

While it has to be conceded that these were conceived with good intentions, it was their implementation and the attendant disastrous results that proved to be the party’s undoing. Reform had been the very soul of the party, which it had assiduously built from its inception.

Yet, in carrying out these reforms, the Liberal Party went overboard, much to its own detriment. Its reformatory zeal, which saw it carry out a series of reforms when it was in office in the period from 1868 to 1874, worked eventually to the advantage of the Tories, for most of its reforms, though carried out in earnest, were implemented without taking into account the intricacies and sensitivities of the constituencies they hurt. If the reforms were carried out to cater to one section of society, they invariably ended up antagonising another. Unable to balance these entrenched political institutions and lobbies, the party slid to defeat in 1874.

To this core cause of their defeat were added some secondary factors such as the legendary organisational and oratorical skills of the leader of the Conservative (Tory) Party, Benjamin Disraeli, who used these to good effect in the years his party was out of power and mobilised public opinion in its favour, and the fallout of economic difficulties caused by the corn crisis, and the depression of 1873. More than anything else, the significance of the Liberal Party’s loss in this election is profound –although it was to return to power in 1880, the election of 1874 turned out to be the seminal event of the start of its decline. The 1874 verdict signalled the death-knell of this party, whose redundancy to the British political system was officially sealed in this election. In less than half a century from this election, the Liberals were nearly wiped out from the political scene in Britain.
Part II:

Background to the elections of 1874:

The Liberals had been returned with a thumping majority in the 1868 election, in which they had fought on almost the same ideology that had dominated the party almost from its birth. If the policies of the establishment towards the Church became the plank from which they attacked the ruling establishment on the domestic front, the policy towards the United States of America was the platform on which they sought to establish themselves among the public. In the years leading to the elections of 1868, public opinion in Britain was strongly divided between the Leftist Liberals and the Conservatives.

The Civil War in America had provided a strong impetus for the polarisation of Britain’s leading political parties. Being Leftist in orientation, the Liberals looked to the American ideal of freedom and enormous wealth, while the Conservatives had mourned the loss of this fabulously endowed colony to a handful of people, who in their opinion were renegades who had nothing but total scorn and irreverence to the Empire. (Pelling, 1956, pp. 1-3) The Liberal Party had sought to extend its base among the electorate by building upon one of its foremost founding principles, as it had done in almost all previous elections –the Lockean theory of natural rights and the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. (Hudelson, 1999, p. 30) Its ideology was rooted in the formative years of its development dating to the late 18th century, and it believed in minimal government interference in the affairs of administration.

To it, “[s]ince the greatest danger of interference in the lives of individuals came from governments, (it) emphasized political liberty as the essential prerequisite for liberty in all its phases… Committed to the spiritual progress of the individual in its broadest sense, liberals believed in change and reform…” (Di Scala & Mastellone, 1998, pp. 30, 31)

An era of reforms: In a few years leading to elections of 1868, England had been in the throes of extremely important changes, which necessitated major reforms in the social and political arenas. Beginning in the few years prior to Victoria’s ascension to the throne of England, there had been a series of reforms, the credit for whose initiation both the Tories and Liberals could take in almost equal measure. The prelude to these reforms was the combination of two major factors –the spectacular change in the economy and the explosion of the country’s population.

The onset of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century necessitated political changes that had to absorb the dramatic transformation of the economy from an agricultural to an industrial mode. These reforms had also to take into account the demographic changes brought about by a sudden increase in the population. Though there were a series of reforms aimed at the economy, the most important reform of a political nature that matched these was the Reform Act of 1832. What this Act did was to increase the number of voters based on certain qualifications. (Hopkins, 2000, pp.1- 5) While this Act gave the right to vote to every male householder in the boroughs, who had occupied a house with a rental value of at least £10 (Disraeli, 1998, p. 434), this was felt outdated in a few years. This was to give rise to the Reform Act of 1867. Under the provisions of this Act, enfranchisement was extended to all male householders in the boroughs and of occupiers of houses whose value was estimated at above £12. This was to not only increase the number of voters, it also had the effect of creating a stratification of the constituencies. The system created was such that any one political party could gain an upper hand over the other. What this increased electorate did was to create “…a more uniform constituency, particularly in the larger towns and in the counties. Previously, the smaller number of voters had led to the predominance of local interests, political, personal or sectional, and matters that swayed one constituency frequently failed to affect many others. The 1867 extension not only added more voters but tended to include whole groups with similar attitudes and needs. Thus while local influence was still powerful, particularly in the smaller boroughs, there was a common element in many constituencies which reacted in a similar fashion (to unemployment, better organisation, political appeals) all across the country. As a result, where national factors tended to benefit the government or its opponents in general elections, this benefit was registered by some successes in every type of seat.” (Mackintosh, 1962, pp. 162, 163) This is seen as one of the reasons the electorate swayed towards the Tories in 1874 –if Benjamin Disraeli could appeal to one constituency or class of the electorate, he could almost as effectively make the same impact on nearly the entire sweep of the voters. (Mackintosh, 1962, pp. 162, 163) The way in which he succeeded in this is illustrated later.

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The Reform Act of 1867, of which the Tories were the architects may have provided for changes in the enfranchisement of the electorate, but they had not impacted the composition of the Liberal Party at the elections, which remained true to its radical character. “The 1867 Reform Act did not significantly change the social composition of the Liberal Party. Nearly half of the 384 Liberal MPs were drawn from the aristocracy and gentry, while almost a quarter could be classed as merchants and manufacturers. About sixty MPs were representatives of Nonconformist churches, such as Unitarians, Congregationalists or Baptists, or of ...

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