Editing Peterloo Massacre (section)

===Suffrage===
{{Main|Unreformed House of Commons}}
In 1819, [[Lancashire (UK Parliament constituency)|Lancashire]] was represented by two county [[members of parliament]] (MPs) and a further twelve borough members sitting for the towns of [[Clitheroe (UK Parliament constituency)|Clitheroe]], [[Newton (UK Parliament constituency)|Newton]], [[Wigan (UK Parliament constituency)|Wigan]], [[Lancaster (UK Parliament constituency)|Lancaster]], [[Liverpool (UK Parliament constituency)|Liverpool]], and [[Preston (UK Parliament constituency)|Preston]], with a total of 17,000 voters in a county population of nearly a million. Thanks to deals by Whig and Tory parties to carve up the seats between them, most had not seen a contested election within living memory.{{sfnp|Poole|2019|pp=80–84}}

Nationally, the so-called [[rotten borough]]s had a hugely disproportionate influence on the membership of the [[Parliament of the United Kingdom]] compared to the size of their populations: [[Old Sarum (UK Parliament constituency)|Old Sarum]] in Wiltshire, with one voter, elected two MPs,{{sfnp|Reid|1989|p=28|ps=none}} as did [[Dunwich (UK Parliament constituency)|Dunwich]] in Suffolk, which by the early 19th century had almost completely disappeared into the sea.<ref name="BBC 1998-05-19">{{cite news |title=The Great Reform Act |date=19 May 1998 |work=[[BBC News Online]] |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/talking_politics/95699.stm |access-date=26 March 2008 |archive-date=4 March 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060304130651/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/talking_politics/95699.stm |url-status=live }}</ref> The major urban centres of [[Manchester]], [[Salford, Greater Manchester|Salford]], [[Bolton]], [[Blackburn]], [[Rochdale]], [[Ashton-under-Lyne]], [[Oldham]] and [[Stockport]] had no MPs of their own, and only a few hundred county voters. By comparison, more than half of all MPs were returned by a total of just 154&nbsp;owners of rotten or closed boroughs.{{sfnp|Reid|1989|p=28|ps=none}} In 1816, [[Thomas Oldfield]]'s ''The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland; being a History of the House of Commons, and of the Counties, Cities, and Boroughs of the United Kingdom from the earliest Period'' claimed that of the 515 MPs for England and Wales 351 were returned by the patronage of 177 individuals and a further 16 by the direct patronage of the government: all 45 Scottish MPs owed their seats to patronage.<ref>data re-presented in Document 168 ''Table of Parliamentary Patronage 1794–1816'' in {{cite book |editor1-last=Aspinall |editor1-first=A. |editor1-link=Arthur Aspinall (historian) |editor2-last=Smith |editor2-first=Anthony |title=English Historical Documents, 1783–1832 |date=1995 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-415-14373-8 |pages=223–236 |edition=reprint |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7hsvv9PZ5zcC |access-date=4 May 2020 |archive-date=16 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220816032253/https://books.google.com/books?id=7hsvv9PZ5zcC |url-status=live }}</ref> These inequalities in political representation led to calls for reform.<ref name="BBC 1998-05-19"/><ref name="Guardian 2007-08-13"/>