The newly enfranchised class swiftly elected the Liberal government of William Ewart Gladstone, belligerent to landowners and Conservatives.
The incomes of landowners are rising while they are sleeping, through the general prosperity produced by the labour and outlay of other people.University of California economist Peter H. Lindert wrote:[3] The issue of unequal ownership also heated up in the 1870s.
The question was put in the House of Lords on 19 February 1872 by Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby (1826–1893) to the Lord Privy Seal, "Whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to take any steps for ascertaining the number of proprietors of land and houses in the United Kingdom, with the quantity of land owned by each proprietor".
Lord Halifax accepted the case for the production of a Return, it was prepared by the Local Government Board, and was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
All statements and information in the Return, except for owner addresses, were derived from rating valuation lists for assessments under the Poor Law and were already held by each parish.
Wealthy householders and landowners paid a tax (rates) to maintain the roads, other features and chiefly to support the poor.
Unlike the Domesday Book, the 1873 Return was not based on original research by surveyors but compiled existing parish data.
The valuation lists of 1873 were prepared under the provisions of the Union Assessment Committee Act of 1862, which was introduced by Poor Law Board president Charles Pelham Villiers.
Clerks of the Poor Law unions were ordered to draw up lists of such people from the property valuation and rate books in their custody.
John Bateman, in the preface to his 1883 work (see below), summarised the situation: That the affairs of one's neighbours are of no little interest to men of every class of life has perhaps never been more strongly proved than by the production of and great demand for The Modern Domesday Book.
Not only have Mr. Frederick Purdy and others analysed it, Mr. Lyulph Stanley abused it, Mr. John Bright moved its digestion in the House, and the Spectator and other London journals scathingly criticised it, but the immense herd of country newspapers have actually reproduced it, as far as their own neighbourhoods are concerned, in their columns, much, probably, to the satisfaction of the bulk of readers, to whom twenty-six shillings [equivalent to £129 in 2018] (the price of the English volumes alone) is prohibitory.
As an example of this, I may mention, that having a small party in my house during one of those dubious weeks which come in 'twixt the close of the hunting and the beginning of the London season, I was saved all Marthean cares as to the amusement of my guests simply by leaving about on the table the two huge volumes of The Modern Domesday, over which I found bowed with the utmost constancy two or more heads.
I heard from one of my guests that the copy of the work at the Ultratorium[b] was reduced to rags and tatters within a fortnight of its arrival a lesson which was not wasted on the library committee of my own club, who caused the book to be so bound as to defy anything short of a twelve-year-old school-boy.