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Some non-military context. > with what he got, instead of partying, went to Edinburgh to get a first class education in moral philosophy Scotland was the plac
by cjs_ac 3y ago
Some non-military context.
> with what he got, instead of partying, went to Edinburgh to get a first class education in moral philosophy
Scotland was the place to get such an education at the time.[0]
> decided to get elected. went to a very corrupt district where votes were bought for five guineas. campaigned on principles. lost heavily but paid all those who voted for him ten guineas after the fact. next year campaigned on principles again and won. when people came to him for the ten guineas, said “The former gift was for their disinterested conduct in not taking the bribe of five pounds from the agents of my opponent. For me to pay them now would be a violation of my own previously expressed principles”
Prior to the Reform Act 1832[1], each town with a Royal Charter had the right to elect two burgesses to the House of Commons. There were numerous 'rotten boroughs', such as Old Sarum, whose two burgesses were chosen by just seven electors, the rest of the population having moved downhill to Salisbury in the thirteenth century, or Dunwich, once one of the most important towns in England, but now washed away into the North Sea. Elections were not secret, and in rotten boroughs, electors could be bribed individually. Manchester, a bustling settlement of one million inhabitants by the time of the Act, on the other hand, was not chartered, and consequently had no burgesses in the Commons at all.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832
- 082349872349872 3y agoand for follow-on history to the Reform Act of 1832: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833#:~:text=Up%20until%20then,the%20British%20empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833#:~:...
- cf1241290841 3y agoYour link seems to go to the article itself. What function did you try to use? Did you try to reference this paragraph? >Up until then, sugar planters from rich British islands such as the Colony of Jamaica and Barbados were able to buy rotten and pocket boroughs, and they were able to form a body of resistance to moves to abolish slavery itself. This West India Lobby, which later evolved into the West India Committee, purchased enough seats to be able to resist the overtures of abolitionists. However, the Reform Act 1832 swept away their rotten borough seats, clearing the way for a majority of members of the House of Commons to push through a law to abolish slavery itself throughout the British Empire.[21]
- lelandfe 3y agoNo FF support yet: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Text_fragments https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Text_fragments
- 082349872349872 3y agoSorry, hadn't realised those were bleeding edge :(
- lelandfe 3y agoIt's had good support for a couple years now, but only Mozilla is lagging for some reason. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- jimz 3y agoI would like to be pedantic and mention that instead of outright bribery as we know today, the sort of coercion (in the broadest sense of the word) that enabled the rotten boroughs involved some far more innovative and long-term thinking like ensuring that the demographics of boroughs in question, if anyone still lived there, to essentially to owe their ability to live and by extension, ply their trades and all that. You are effectively voting so you can have a place to live, in many cases. Old Sarum is the classical case and almost certainly the most egregious one in a prima facie manner but thanks to the manifold of coercive measures implemented it took until the implementation of secret ballots to truly ensure that the old rotten boroughs age was finally no longer a serious concern, and that took another... 40 years? (I realize that I'm focusing on the descriptor on pocket boroughs specifically, which is a subset of the broader rotten boroughs phenomenon, but the subset's primary differentiation comes from how they were attained and not how their existence determined the makeup of parliament, considering that large landowners were able to have "in their pocket" the votes of multiple constituencies that they could exert indirect coercion over quite readily). Yes, it's amazing looking back that one did not follow the other somehow, but baby steps man, baby steps. It beats no steps at all when there's not really a better alternative on the table, even if it's a long way from ideal.
- azangru 3y agoI love how an education in moral philosophy did not interfere with piracy.
- hnfong 3y agoPiracy was literally the national occupation of the Brits during the 18th and 19th century. The difference was just a matter of scale and whether your ship was sanctioned by the government.