[Sidenote: 1835--The Municipal Reform Bill]
The measure was to apply to 183 boroughs, not including the metropolis, with an average of 11,000 persons to each borough. Some of the larger boroughs were to be divided into wards, and in most cases the intention of the measure was that the boundaries of the Parliamentary borough should be the boundaries of the municipal borough as well. The governing body of each municipality was to consist of a Mayor and Councillors, the Councillors to be elected by resident ratepayers. It was proposed that the rights of living freemen were to be maintained, but as each life lapsed the right was to be extinguished, and thus the whole freeman system was to die out and all exclusive trading privileges were to be abolished. The Bill, as introduced by Lord John Russell, only applied to England and Wales; but O'Connell demanded that Ireland should also be included in the reform, and it was finally agreed that a Bill of the same nature should be brought in for Ireland, and that arrangements should be made with the Scottish representatives to have the provisions of the { 259} measure applied also to Scotland so far as might be consistent with the usages and the desire of the Scottish people.
Sir Robert Peel did not offer any direct opposition to the measure, although he criticised it severely enough in some of its provisions. His speech, however, was distinctly a declaration in favor of some comprehensive scheme of municipal reform, and might fairly have been regarded rather as a help than as a hinderance to the purposes of the Government. The example set by Sir Robert Peel had naturally much influence over the greater number of the Conservative party, and only some very old-fashioned Conservatives seemed inclined to make a stand against the measure. Mr. Grote seized the opportunity to introduce a motion for the adoption of the ballot in municipal elections, but it is hardly necessary to say that he did not secure support enough on either side of the House to win success for his proposition. The Bill passed through the House of Commons without any important change in its character, but it met with very serious maltreatment in the House of Lords. The majority of the peers did not see their way to compass the actual rejection of the Bill, especially after the liberal and statesmanlike spirit in which Sir Robert Peel had dealt with it; but they set themselves to work with the object of rendering it as nearly useless as they could for the purposes which its promoters had in view. Lord Lyndhurst led the opposition to the Bill, and he could, when he so pleased, become the very narrowest of Tories, while he had ability and plausibility not included in the intellectual stock of any other Tory then in the House of Lords. Under this leadership the Tory peers so disfigured and mangled the Bill that before long its own authors could hardly have recognized it as the work of their hands. The peers not only restored all, or nearly all, the abuses and anomalies which the measure as it left the House of Commons had marked for utter abolition, but they even went so far as to introduce into their version of the Bill some entirely new and original suggestions for the creation of abuses up to that time unknown to the existing municipal system.