Long ago the coast had sunk and the
salt-sea waves now washed the remains of a ruined town. Bosseney in
Cornwall was a hamlet of three cottages, but its citizens were entitled
to send two men to Parliament.
While these decayed towns and "rotten boroughs" continued to enjoy
representation, populous and opulent cities like Birmingham,
Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield were ignored. They had grown with the
growth of industry, while the older towns had declined. Yet
Parliamentary representation underwent no change from the days of
Charles II to the third decade of the nineteenth century. Thus
Parliament in the eighteenth century represented neither the different
classes of society nor the masses of population. Politics was a
gentleman's game. The nobleman who sat in the upper house had his
dummies in the lower chamber. A certain Sir James Lowther had nine
proteges in the lower house, who were commonly called "Lowther's
Ninepins." A distinguished statesman of the time described the position
of such a protege: "He is sent here by the lord of this or the duke of
that, and if he does not obey the instructions which he receives, he is
held to be a dishonest man.
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