By contrast the mid-size boroughs with two members such as the new creations – wherever they so happened to have two MPs of the same party – produced twice the voting power in the House as such cities.

[citation needed] William Ewart Gladstone, leading a Liberal government, introduced a Representation of the People Bill in 1884, which sought to greatly extend the franchise but not to alter the boundaries of constituencies.

He realised that the bill's extension of household suffrage into the counties would enfranchise many rural voters such as coalminers and agricultural labourers who were likely to vote for the Liberals.

Salisbury hoped to use the Conservative majority in the Lords to block the bill and force Gladstone to seek a dissolution of Parliament before the reforms could be enacted.

The Lords duly rejected the bill and returned it to the Commons, provoking outrage among the Radical wing of the Liberals.

A campaign organised around the slogan "The Peers Against the People" called for reform or abolition of the Lords if they rejected the bill a second time.

[8] During October 1884 Queen Victoria intervened in what was rapidly becoming a constitutional crisis, urging the party leaders to meet and break the deadlock.

Negotiations duly started at Salisbury's London home in Arlington Street, Westminster, between the Conservative leader and Sir Charles Dilke, a member of Gladstone's cabinet.

He calculated that this would minimise the adverse effect on the Conservatives of the extension of the vote: dividing the counties would allow Liberal-voting and Conservative-voting districts to be separated.

[citation needed] In dividing the counties they were to use Ordnance Survey maps and other documents in order to determine the boundaries of divisions.

Where suburban areas had a sufficiently large population and distinct identity they might form a county division rather than be included in the borough.

[citation needed] The committee's work coupled with the Arlington Street Compact resulted a major redistribution under the Act as follows: Apart from boundary changes, approximately 160 seats were new (or "liberated" as Gladstone described it) in England and Wales.

The number of seats in Scotland was increased by 12, and the representation of Ireland in Parliament remained at 103 members, even though its population had declined relative to the rest of the United Kingdom, due to emigration which had continued since the famine.

[15] The division of former two-member constituencies had a direct, clear consequence: it hastened the decline of the domination of Parliament by the aristocracy (formed of those who had won Royal and often military favour and their heirs, many of whom were accurately referred to as the 'landed gentry').

Nonetheless, the Lords and their sons, grandsons and nephews in the Commons continued to form the greater part of the Cabinet until the Asquith ministry – further, the Lords legally bore equal strength, save for their inability to initiate bills spending public funds since 1407,[16] until Asquith's constitutional Parliament Act 1911.

[citation needed] The sudden balance of power of the seats held or won by Irish Parliamentary Party candidates galvanised those opposed to Home Rule.

This third party power of veto coupled with the end of local electoral pacts in a foreseeable way; Disraeli and Gladstone needed central control of their members to pursue narrower narratives and promote differing values.

Peers of the Whig persuasion flocked to a conservative line given immediate loss of family ties (hence leverage) in the Commons and tide of reformist policies engulfing the Liberal party caused by the Act's generous franchise and loss of their coveted and often sponsored Whig-Radical and Whig-Conservative dual-member seats in the Commons.

The opening words of free thought of the Lords, in its reply to the Queen's Speech came from the Duke of Abercorn who said:- "My Lords, I rise to propose that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty in reply to the Gracious Speech from the Throne, and in doing this I have to crave that indulgence from your Lordships which is always accorded to one who addresses your Lordships for the first time....

Questions of vital moment and importance affecting the safety of the Empire will have to be discussed, and the country will carefully scrutinize them; and the manner in which they are treated by a Parliament elected for the first time under household suffrage will be earnestly watched.

[3][9] 132 small areas ("parliamentary boroughs") were merged with part or all of their surrounding county constituency, all of which had previously returned two members.

Courted for decades with the promise of for social change, religious freedom and free trade by Liberals, often served by a Radical-leaning alongside and a Whig-leaning MP, these boroughs had few Conservative MPs at most elections.

Their substitute single-member seats where gaining suburban and wealthy rural parts particularly assisted the Conservative party, which took a position of national "strength and unity" in opposing Chamberlain's "radicalism" preferring instead education reform and opposing Gladstone's Home Rule "crusade" in favour of budgetary concessions and support for unionist Irish businesses.

"[18] The Conservative party thinkers and leaders in both houses had now enfranchised the majority of men trusting them to break the deadlock in their favour; in return they had espoused religious freedom and almost completely free trade.

Whig and the most progressive Radical candidates could now be branded "weak", "divided" or "distanced" from the line of Gladstone and his successors which proved a flaw in the broad congregation of the Liberal Party until the formation of the final splinter group of 1931.

This unorthodoxy combined with heavy defeats on other Commons bills in the House of Lords which began to hemorrhage more Whigs led to electoral landslide victories for the Conservative party in 1886 and 1895 to break the deadlock.

[66] Comprised five parliamentary burghs: Inverurie, Kintore and Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Banff and Cullen in Banffshire, and Elgin in Elginshire.

[24] Comprised four parliamentary burghs: Forres in Elginshire, Inverness in Inverness-shire, Nairn in Nairnshire and Fortrose in Ross and Cromarty.