Nothing could
be more misleading. The "Glorious Revolution" of 1689 was a _coup
d'etat_ engineered by the upper classes, and the liberty it
preserved was the liberty of nobles, squires, and merchants--not the
political liberty of the common people.
[Sidenote: The Unreformed Parliament]
The House of Commons was essentially undemocratic. Only one man in
every ten had even the nominal right to vote. It is estimated that from
1760 to 1832 nearly one-half of the members owed their seats to
patrons, and the reformed representatives of large towns were
frequently chosen by a handful of rich merchants. In fact, the
government was controlled by the upper class of society, and by only a
part of that. No representatives sat for the numerous manufacturing
towns which had sprung into importance during the last few decades, and
rich manufacturers everywhere complained that the country was being
ruined by the selfish administration of great landowners and commercial
aristocrats.
Certain it is that the Parliament of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, while wonderfully earnest and successful in enriching
England's landlords and in demolishing every obstacle to British
commerce, at the same time either willfully neglected or woefully
failed to do away with intolerance in the Church and injustice in the
courts, or to defend the great majority of the people from the greed of
landlords and the avarice of employers.
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