18세기 초기 영국의 선거민

Abstract

Like professors G. Holmes or W. A. Speck's assertions, in the early 18th century when antagonism between the Tory and the Whig became acute, electorate played an important role in English politics. So, as J. H. Plumb said, in those days, the voters of England were one of the main reasons why England didn't have political stability. The number of voters was increased by 25% from in 1689 to a quarter century of 1715, which was caused by natural population growth, illegal creations of voters and decisions of parliaments. Also, the rates of their turnovers were very high and the rates of their participations to elections was high. The former was caused by voters' deaths, inaccurate poll books and illegal creations of voters, while the latter by the voters' political indifferences or their lacks of interests, lacks of their firm decision in selecting the suitable candidates, their political considerations, their personal affairs, their diseases, wide geographical distributions of voters, rioters' threats to them, inappropriate voting days, unfavorable weathers during the voting days, their personal losses caused by their participations to votes, inconvenient voting places and so forth. Also, unlike the voters in the late 18th century when the issues were not important to them any more and the political nations were united into one class, they were so independent that they voted according to not their own interests but great and small issues that were presented whenever general elections were held, even though there were many obstacles such as the court's influences, honors of gentry, pressures or persuasions of landowners, bribes, menaces of rioters.