Excerpt from High School Civics: A Brief Treatment of the Civics Section of History 3

In 1866, Earl Russel, better known as Lord J ohn Russell, proposed a new reform bill to extend the vote, but Dis raeli opposed it successfully in Parliament and then won a general election on the issue. This so exasperated the people that Disraeli who had just been elected to prevent the masses getting the vote, now turned round and gave it to them because he feared a revolution if he did not. His measure of 1867, the Second Reform Bill, extended the franchise to include more than a million wage-earners in the towns. These were the first to be enfranchised, because the agitation which brought this change was centered in the urban population. The rural classes had to wait some years before they received the franchise. Then they got it because Gladstone believed it-unjust to withhold from the country what had been given to the towns. His Reform Bill of 1884 added two million voters. Although the franchise was thus extended to the working class, it was not given to all. It was hedged about by qualifications, such as the ownershiptof a certain amount of property or the payment of so much rent. Not until 1918 was the right to vote given to all men over twenty-one years old. This introduction of manhood suffrage added two million to the voters' list. At the same time, women were granted the suffrage, but not on equal terms with the men. Only those over thirty years old were allowed to vote, but the government in 1928 promised to do away with this inequality.

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