Could someone describe the UK's evolution in becomeing democratic?

[Plushie]

He's still not wrong. The property restrictions were pretty low threshholds, I believe in Rhode Island you just had to be able to prove you were worth at least $20. Not exactly a pittance, but not vast sums either, and that value could be anything from a share in a ship, to a parcel of land, to actual money in the actual pocket. It was about proving that you were a stable and solvent member of the community, not that you were highborn gentry

Now that said -- that's Rhode Island, a very plutocratic state in a very plutocratic region. Wouldn't surprise me to learn that the standards of property ownership in say Virginia were much higher.

40 pounds, actually, not 20 dollars. Still not a supremely high requirement -- probably three quarters of adult white male Rhode Islanders met the requirement in the late 1770's --, but different there. The real amazing thing about Rhode Island is how long it kept the requirement: The proportion of Rhode Island men who met the requirement sank slowly as the 19th century rode onward until Dorr's revolt in the early 1840's finally drove the the adoption of something more resembling white manhood suffrage (although not quite there yet).

More broadly, the idea that only big property owners could vote in the 18th and early 19th century in the US is just plain wrong. Property requirements were always fairly low for the wide availability of land in the US and they were often ignored. Where they continued in existence after the Revolution, they were almost always lowered and they disappeared quickly. Probably 70-75% of the adult white male population could vote at the end of the Revolution, and that's including the extremes of Virginia (~40%-70%) and Pennsylvania (90%+). It's not even a thing easily tied to sectional politics, which were nascent at the time: North Carolina joined Pennsylvania at the top of the list as far as white manhood suffrage went (taxpayer suffrage, in their case, with carveouts in PA for the adult sons of tax payers still living at home). Meanwhile, Connecticut and Rhode Island retained colonial charters with relatively restrictive franchises (although, again, widespread de facto suffrage), while Massachusetts actually raised its requirement (de jure...de facto, it was broadly ignored and a form of taxpayer suffrage was practiced in much of the state).

It gets complex, though, because those enfranchised to vote for an assembly election were not necessarily enfranchised to vote in, say, a governor's election. Still, this is all in the immediate surroundings of the Revolution (immediately prior, during, and in the aftermath of), the franchise in most states began opening quickly, to the point where something like universal white male suffrage had been achieved by the 1820's, with a few key exceptions.

In other words, krieger11b's post is the kind of silly cynicism that replaces ignorant idealism with ignorant anti-idealism: not actually any kind of improvement. For these kinds of people, it's not enough that 50% (women) + 15% (blacks) weren't allowed to vote, they have to introduce silly, anachronistic conceptions of feudalism/landlordism.

 

[joak]

Probably 70-75% of the adult white male population could vote at the end of the Revolution, and that's including the extremes of Virginia (~40%-70%) and Pennsylvania (90%+).

Do you have a source for this? I learned around 1 in 4, which doesn't mean much, but I haven't seen anything as high as your numbers trying to google. This book exceprt for example would put it at most at around 30%.

 

[Xeorm]

Do you have a source for this? I learned around 1 in 4, which doesn't mean much, but I haven't seen anything as high as your numbers trying to google. This book exceprt for example would put it at most at around 30%.

That's for England. Your excerpt even has "Chilton Williamson and Robert Dinkin estimated that in the late colonial era the proportion of freehold owners ranged between 50 and 75 (or even 80) percent in the various communities and states, while Alexander Keyssar suggests that overall nearly 60 percent of adult white males were eligible to vote."

For the colonials at least.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

It's worth emphasising that the 1689 Bill of Rights established the precedent (repeated in the Act of Settlement) that Parliament is sovereign, and has the power to choose who will be king, and to put restrictions on the king's power. (As opposed to the king voluntarily choosing to accept limitations of his power as an act of benevolence.)

"Choose" the king? That's over-reading it. They can't choose the postmaster or an earl, much less the king. 1688 didn't establish parliamentary sovereignty. Very premature. Even Locke didn't have such notions.

That said, such high-sounding proclamations don't mean much of anything. Bill is just a statement of principles, it doesn't really impose any real restrictions. And they can always be amended or repealed - as all the safeguards (e.g. the Triennial act) were under Charles II. William III certainly didn't see the bill as hampering him in any way, and didn't regard it as a condition of the crown.

What established parliamentary power were facts. The major fact that played out here was of distracted or disinterested kings. The other major fact was that post-1688 parliament began using its real legislative powers - such as the power of the purse - much more cleverly. Most notably, they started putting severe time limits on legislation, to force the king to keep them in session. For instance, the budget became strictly annual. Rather than vote the king a sum in taxes and customs dues that could be collected over several years, sometimes over their entire reign, taxes now expired at the end of the year. A new budget has to be voted every year. If the king refuses to convene a session, the government will run out of money very quickly.

Another cute example is the "Mutiny Act". Its kinda like the British version of the 2nd Amendment. The Mutiny Act is the legal basis of instituting discipline in the army, requiring soldiers to obey their superiors, etc. But the Mutiny Act always expires after one year. It has to be passed again and again. That's the way of ensuring that if the king decides to keep parliament out of session, then the army dissolves and/or can legally rebel against the crown (and remember he also won't have the money to pay them either).

 

[StephenT]

That said, such high-sounding proclamations don't mean much of anything. Bill is just a statement of principles, it doesn't really impose any real restrictions. And they can always be amended or repealed

The same thing can be said for any law, even the holy and sacred US Constitution. It can always be amended, and it only imposes restrictions in the sense that the people in power (President, Congress, state legislatures, Supreme Court) are willing to follow it. And yet, nobody would call it empty or meaningless.

William said of the Bill of Rights that he "was not at all enamoured of it and was unwilling to give his assent, but that the political situation forced him to do so". That doesn't sound like he thought it didn't mean much. Likewise, when Parliament in 1689 refused to grant him revenue for life but only for a year — which you do mention— he was indignant; but he felt compelled to go along with it, because he knew that under the circumstances Parliament, not the King, had the upper hand.

In his coronation oath, James II swore to uphold the laws 'granted by the kings of England'. William III's oath swore to uphold the laws 'in Parliament agreed on'. Of course it didn't mean that England became a parliamentary democracy overnight; the king still had real power (to declare war or appoint ministers, for example). But if you want to pinpoint the key moment in English history when the balance tipped, 1688-89 was that moment.

 

[Avernite]

But if you want to pinpoint the key moment in English history when the balance tipped, 1688-89 was that moment.

And what'd we get as thanks? Nothing!

Perfidious Albion...

 

[krieger11b]

The Homestead Act is the best example, but there were also more localized ones, like the Georgia Land Lotteries (starting in 1805). But now that I'm looking into it more it does seem like the headright system used up to the 19th century seems to have favored landlordism and may be a reason why plantations took off in the South more so than in the North.

That had more to do with geography. The Northern part of the first 13 States we much more rugged as far as hills and mountains go and the Southern States were much flatter and had lots of good land to farm. Hence the reason for early English settlement being around Virginia, which was great for farming and had lots of heavy timber available, the first concentration in America for England was cash crops raised by settlers in exchange for credits for manufactured goods (no cash). The North also had lots of wood available and importantly iron ore. So the North had really not much to do other than gear towards manufacturing and the South with the lack of iron and lots of farmland end up being farmers. So in a heavy generalization, if you had very little money and wanted to seek fortune you went north, if you had lots of money you purchased huge plantations and expensive slaves and sold cash crops like tobacco and later on cotton, especially after the invention of the cotton gin. If you wanted to live off the land and be independent you could go either place really, each had their advantages and disadvantages.




Anyways it's very interesting the path the UK took from Feudal Monarchy to universal suffrage. Leading the way as an example for Europe (outside places like Switzerland), which does confuse me a bit why they put in a monarchy in France after Napoleon, though let's be honest the UK is far from the only example of an at least somewhat democratic nation placing a despot in charge of a country they "liberate." *Looks at avatar*

 

[soda7777777]

And what'd we get as thanks? Nothing!

Perfidious Albion...

You get England no longer antagonising the Dutch republic, and instead going back to fighting France.

 

[StephenT]

And what'd we get as thanks? Nothing!

Perfidious Albion...

Hey! We let you tow away a bunch of our warships from the Medway to use as a tourist attraction!

 

[joak]

That's for England. Your excerpt even has "Chilton Williamson and Robert Dinkin estimated that in the late colonial era the proportion of freehold owners ranged between 50 and 75 (or even 80) percent in the various communities and states, while Alexander Keyssar suggests that overall nearly 60 percent of adult white males were eligible to vote."

For the colonials at least.

Apparently my google skills are better than my reading comprehension skills. As an excuse, it was late and I'd been skimming a lot of web sites to see what the real number was, and I'd gotten into a mode of looking for percentages.

So I found my a source. Well over 50% seems accurate. And the 1-in-4 from my high school history book (American Pageant by Bailey and Kennedy) was wrong. Maybe it was the best scholarship at the time.

 

[Arilou]

I think you have to consider the rise of parlamentarism and of democracy as two separate things: Parliaments weren't really unusual. (though the british system survived longer than most) but it was still a reserved governance by the propertied classes. (though because of changes in the economic system "propertied" could end up being quite weird)

Eg. Sweden had reduced the king to a figured head for a good chunk of the 18th century, but was hardly democratic in any sense of the word.

 

[Captain Frakas]

The US was similar in the beginning at least with just land owning white males able to vote. Kind of takes the wind out of the whole freedom for all propaganda we hear. As a retired Drug Enforcement Agency agent asked me when did the US citizen first have rights and he said Lyndon Johnson because before that the government did whatever the hell they wanted.

The US quasi-immediately adopted the universal adult male national suffrage at the federal level (because it was too difficult to found a good censal level that would work across all states) while the UK only ended its censal male adult suffrage after the Great War. Hence it's not that similar.

Most Tommies who were killed in Trench wars had never enjoyed any civic right.

 

[keynes2.0]

Most Tommies who were killed in Trench wars had never enjoyed any civic right.

Surely they had enjoyed civic rights like haebus corpus even if they were disenfranchised.

 

[joak]

The US quasi-immediately adopted the universal adult male national suffrage at the federal level (because it was too difficult to found a good censal level that would work across all states) while the UK only ended its censal male adult suffrage after the Great War. Hence it's not that similar.

Most Tommies who were killed in Trench wars had never enjoyed any civic right.

What does censal mean?

 

[Captain Frakas]

Surely they had enjoyed civic rights like haebus corpus even if they were disenfranchised.

I wasn't aware it was a civic right. I thought that any inhabitant, regardless of his citizenship, would profit from habeas corpus. Anyway, I wanted to say they had no right of suffrage. Adult male national Americans had, more than one century before, right of suffrage at the federal level (but not necessary at lower levels).

What does censal mean?

Word Reference gave me "censal" as the English translation for censitaire adj (suffrage). But I can't find this word in other English dictionaries. I'm afraid that I did chose a bad word.

Suffrage censitaire mean that only peoples paying an enough high level of taxes can vote. The cens, tax quota for voting rights, was determined because only peoples who had enough earnings would took the time to improve their own knowledge so they would be good citizens. The problem in the United-States, at the time of the establishment of their constitution, was that there was so different economies among member states that it would not have been possible to set a good tax quota for voting right that would work for the whole union.

If it was too high, it would had rejected from citizenship many notable of some states where the cost of life and earnings was lower than the mean while if it was too low it would had granted citizenship to some commoners in states where the cost of life and earnings were higher than the mean.

Hence, it was decided, pragmatically, that there should be no federal tax quota for voting rights in the United States.

 

[Imgran]

Censal -- related to the census. IOW if you were subject to being documented by the census, you had these rights whatever they happened to be. So basically adult heads of household (since the census is run on a household basis)

 

[StephenT]

In Britain by the First World War, every (male) head of a household had the vote. That did indeed mean that most soldiers couldn't vote, because a soldier doesn't live in a household, he lives in a barracks with the other soldiers. It also excluded many servants and agricultural labourers.

Originally the motive seems to have been very pragmatic:
Parliament's primary power and role was to authorise property taxes.
Only people who owned property had to pay these taxes.
Therefore, only people with property should have the vote.

No representation without taxation, so to speak.

By modern times Parliament's role had expanded along with the functions of the state; more laws were passed, Parliament assumed more and more rights and obligations; and so it became less reasonable to exclude the unpropertied from having a say in its decisions.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

The same thing can be said for any law, even the holy and sacred US Constitution. It can always be amended, and it only imposes restrictions in the sense that the people in power (President, Congress, state legislatures, Supreme Court) are willing to follow it. And yet, nobody would call it empty or meaningless.

Exactly. Which is why Napoleon III can exist. All the safeguards in the French constitution prevented nothing. Which is why answering the OPs question actually requires understanding not statements, but powers, and why and how they managed to make it stick.

William said of the Bill of Rights that he "was not at all enamoured of it and was unwilling to give his assent, but that the political situation forced him to do so". That doesn't sound like he thought it didn't mean much. Likewise, when Parliament in 1689 refused to grant him revenue for life but only for a year — which you do mention— he was indignant; but he felt compelled to go along with it, because he knew that under the circumstances Parliament, not the King, had the upper hand.

Bill of Rights is particularly weak because not only did William III get the crown without assenting to it, but more importantly it actually says nothing that wasn't already known before, and doesn't introduce any new restrictions going forward. Actual post-1688 legislation introducing real constraints is more interesting.and much more vital. Limiting the budget, for instance, was a novelty, a powerful one, that made a real constraint. That was not implied in the Bill of Rights, but something clever the parliamentarians came up with. Anybody could have done it any time in the past, since the power of the purse has always been with parliament. They've used it before, but only sporadically. They just didn't think of exercising it systematically until then.

As for who had the upper hand, well, depends on who you ask. Keep in mind William III plundered England more thoroughly than any of his predecessors had done. The slew of new taxes and loans he introduced (based on the Dutch model) were much heavier than anything the English had seen before. To suggest parliament had the upper hand is again over-reading the situation. They needed William badly. Without William, James II would have returned with a French army and hung every one of those parliamentarians for treason. For William, the time constraints were a small concession in return for the hefty fiscal subsidies he received.

That said, William was only in England for a few months a year. It is expedient to leave parliament content rather than simmering. Again, it underlines how England had a run of luck with relatively neglectful and distracted kings.

In his coronation oath, James II swore to uphold the laws 'granted by the kings of England'. William III's oath swore to uphold the laws 'in Parliament agreed on'. Of course it didn't mean that England became a parliamentary democracy overnight; the king still had real power (to declare war or appoint ministers, for example). But if you want to pinpoint the key moment in English history when the balance tipped, 1688-89 was that moment.

At best, you can pinpoint the statement that the legislature was separate from the executive. But certainly not supreme.

Of course, it is not a new notion. The idea that an act passed in session can only be suspended, modified or repealed in session, can be traced back to the parliaments of the Middle Ages. This was the principal violation the Stuarts were accused of. It is not that the king cannot make law by royal proclamation but that he cannot modify agreements with parliament when parliament is out of session. Technically, all law still emanates from the king. A parliamentary act needs royal assent in order to become law, and it is defended by King's Counsel, not parliamentary appointees. The reverse is not the case. A royal proclamation does not need a statutory basis (although you can thank the Tudors for the habit of kings seeking out statutory basis in advance of royal proclamations, it was not a constitutional necessity - unless it contradicts a parliamentary act or encroaches on areas reserved to parliamentary prerogative, like taxes.)

And if you want to talk supremacy, 1688 pales by comparison to 1648. In 1648, parliament actually put a king on trial - something that was not only inconceivable in 1688, but was (and remains) constitutionally illegal. If "statements" is all that matters, than the Bill of Rights is a downright capitulation compared to the powers parliament claimed for itself back in 1648. But of course, the "statements" of 1648 did not stick, and the men of 1688 did not even pretend to remember what they were.