Meanwhile John Wilkes (S556), a member of the House of Commons, had gained the recognition of a most important principle.  He was a coarse and violent opponent of the royal policy, and had been expelled from the House on account of his bitter personal attack on the King.[2] Several years later (1768) he was reelected to Parliament, but was again expelled for seditious libel;[3] he was three times reelected by the people of London and Middlesex, who looked upon him as the champion of their cause; each time the House refused to permit him to take his seat, but at the fourth election he was successful.  A few years later (1782) he induced the House to strike out from its journal the resolution there recorded against him.[4] Thus Wilkes, by his indomitable persistency, succeeded in establishing the right of the people to elect the candidate of their choice to Parliament.  During the same period the people gained another great victory over Parliament.  That body had utterly refused to permit the debates to be reported in the newspaperes.  But the redoubtable Wilkes was determined to obtain and publish such reports; rather than have another prolonged battle with him, Parliament conceded the privilege (1771) (S556).  The result was that the public then, for the first time, began to know what business Parliament actually transactaed, and how it was done.  This fact, of course, rendered the members of both Houses far more directly responsible to the will of the people than they had ever been before.[1]

[2] In No. 45 of the North Briton (1763) Wilkes rudely accused the King of having deliberately uttered a falsehood in his speech to Parliament. [3] The libel was contained in a letter written to the newspapers by Wilkes. [4] The resolution was finally stricken out, on the ground that it was “subversive of the rights of the whole body of electors.” [1] The publication of Division Lists (equivalent to Yeas and Nays) by the House of Commons in 1836 and by the Lords in 1857 completed this work.  Since then the public have known how each member of Parliament votes on every important question.

31.  The Reform Bills of 1832, 1867, 1884; Demand for “Manhood
    Suffrage.”

But notwithstanding this decided political progress, still the greatest reform of all—­that of the system of electing members of Parliament—­still remained to be accomplished.  Cromwell had attempted it (1654), but the Restoration put an end to the work which the Protector had so wisely begun.  Lord Chatham felt the necessity so strongly that he had not hesitated to declare (1766) that the system of representation—­or rather misrepresentation—­which then existed was the “rotten part of the constitution.”  “If it does not drop,” said he, “it must be amputated.”  Later (1770), he became so alarmed at the prospect that he declared that “before the end of the century either the Parliament will reform itself from within, or be reformed from without with a vengeance” (S578).