A kinsman of Pitt's, Lord Mahon, made an equally futile
attempt to diminish the expenses of elections, partly by inflicting very
heavy penalties on parties guilty of either giving or receiving
bribes,[62] and partly by prohibiting candidates from providing
conveyances for electors; and more than one bill for disfranchising
revenue-officers, as being specially liable to pressure from the
government, and to prevent contractors from sitting in Parliament, was
brought forward, but was lost, the smallness of the divisions in their
favor being not the least remarkable circumstance in the early history
of Reform. It was made still more evident that as yet the zeal for
Reform was confined to a few, when, two years afterward, Pitt, though
now invested with all the power of a Prime-minister, was as unable as
when in opposition to carry a Reform Bill, which in more than one point
foreshadowed the measure of 1832; proposing, as it did, the
disfranchisement of thirty-six small boroughs, which were to be
purchased of their proprietors nearly on the principle adopted in the
Irish Union Act, and on the other hand the enfranchisement of
copyholders; but it differed from Lord Grey's act in that it distributed
all the seats thus to be obtained among the counties, with the exception
of a small addition to the representatives of London and Westminster.
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