Event:
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Until now, only landowners and tenants--freeholders with 40 shillings per annum or more--are allowed to vote, and voting takes place in open poll books. Major Cartwright founds the Society for Constitutional Information, one of the first of the "radical societies" that agitated for voting and parliamentary reform; he publishes Give Us Our Rights, insisting that poor men should be allowed to vote. Christopher Wyvill and the Yorkshire Association lead the fight against Parliament. A committee in the Commons passes Dunning's resolution: "That the power of the Crown . . . ought to be diminished" (Parliament's typical reaction to pressure for electoral reform--blame the
king).
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