Until the 1832 United Kingdom general election the major town of Leeds was represented in Parliament solely as a part of the county constituency of Yorkshire.

Immediately after the Parliament elected in 1818 had assembled in 1819, a petition was presented to the House of Commons, complaining in the usual terms, that gross bribery and corruption had been practised in the return of the two Members for the Borough of Grampound, in Cornwall.

The course of procedure in such cases was to pass an act disfranchising the place convicted, and transferring the right so abused and forfeited, to some other body of Electors.

On the meeting of the New Parliament, April 28th, Lord J. Russell gave notice that he should bring in his proposed bill for disfranchising Grampound and transferring the privilege to Leeds.

The Bill was ... framed to extend the right of voting to all Householders rated at or over £5 per annum, which it was estimated would constitute a body of, at least 8,000 Electors for the Borough.

This provision, it was found on examination, would still have thrown the right of returning members, chiefly into the hands of the inferior classes, and necessarily have fostered those impure and unprincipled practices, notoriously prevalent in places similarly privileged.

Wortley to remedy this defect, moved ... that the qualification should be limited to Householders rated at not less than Twenty Pounds per annum ... in its amended form the Bill passed the House of Commons.

Though the general principle of the freeholder franchise was accepted without debate, one aspect of the question gave rise to much discussion at the time ... .

... Althorp ... pointed out that until 1832 freeholders in the unrepresented towns always had voted in the counties, so the Tories could hardly complain that the ministers were introducing new principles to favour urban interests ... .Stooks Smith records the number of electors in the Leeds polling district of the West Riding of Yorkshire constituency, at a by-election in 1835, as 2,250 (out of a total electorate of 18,063).

Lord John Russell, who was the member of the Whig government most involved in taking the reform legislation through Parliament in 1832, still favoured a more extensive franchise than Tory Party spokesmen – just as had been the case more than a decade earlier.

As ownership furnished the ordinary qualification for franchise in the counties, so in the boroughs, occupation, actual or constructive, was the basis of the suffrage.

While however, in the counties no provision was made for ascertaining the true value or bona fide rent which was to qualify for the franchise; in the boroughs, assessment to the taxes was embodied with the condition of value, and actual payment was super-added.

In the latter no claimant could be registered as a voter if he had received parochial relief within the past twelve months; in the counties, no disqualification was attached to the receipt of poor-relief.