The 1865 United Kingdom general election was held 7 July 1865 to 24 July 1865 to elect 658 members of the House of Commons. It saw the Liberals, led by Lord Palmerston, increase their large majority over the Earl of Derby's Conservatives to 80.
Palmerston died in October the same year and was succeeded by Lord John Russell as Prime Minister. Despite the Liberal majority, the party was divided by the issue of further parliamentary reform, and Russell resigned after being defeated in a vote in the House of Commons in 1866, leading to minority Conservative governments under Derby and then Benjamin Disraeli.
This was the last United Kingdom general election until 2019 where a party increased its majority after having been returned to office at the previous election with a reduced majority.
Corruption The 1865 general election was regarded by contemporaries as being a generally dull contest nationally, which exaggerated the degree of corruption within individual constituencies. In his PhD thesis, Cornelius O'Leary described The Times as having reported "the testimony is unanimous that in the General Election of 1865 there was more profuse and corrupt expenditure than was ever known before". As a result of allegations of corruption, 50 election petitions were lodged, of which 35 were pressed to a trial; 13 ended with the elected MP being unseated. In four cases a Royal Commission had to be appointed because of widespread corrupt practices in the constituency.
As a result, when he became Prime Minister in 1867, Benjamin Disraeli announced that he would introduce a new method for election petition trials, which were then determined by a committee of the House of Commons, resulting in the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868, whereby two Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, Exchequer of Pleas or Queen's Bench would be designated to try election petitions with full judicial salaries.
Constituencies Many new constituencies were used for this election:
Northern West Riding of Yorkshire Southern West Riding of Yorkshire
Results
|- class="sortbottom" style="font-weight: bold; text-align: right; background: #f2f2f2;" ! colspan="2" style="padding-left: 1.5em; text-align: left;" | Total | | 658
| +4 | 100 | 100 | 854,856
Voting summary
Seats summary
Regional results
Great Britain Party Candidates Unopposed Seats Seats change Votes % % change 433 133 311 5 457,289 60.0 347 115 244 1 304,538 40.0 Total 780 248 555 761,827 100
England Party Candidates Unopposed Seats Seats change Votes % % change 359 88 251 406,978 59.0 308 94 213 4 291,238 41.0 Total 667 182 464 4 698,216 100
Scotland Party Candidates Unopposed Seats Seats change Votes % % change 51 30 42 2 43,480 85.4 17 7 11 2 4,305 14.6 Total 68 37 53 47,785 100
Wales Party Candidates Unopposed Seats Seats change Votes % % change 21 15 18 3 4,565 74.0 16 12 14 3 1,600 26.0 Total 37 27 32 6,165 100
Ireland
Party Candidates Unopposed Seats Seats change Votes % % change 83 28 58 8 51,532 55.6 59 27 45 8 41,497 44.4 Total 142 55 103 93,029 100
Universities Party Candidates Unopposed Seats Seats change Votes % % change 6 2 6 7,395 76.5 2 0 0 2,266 23.5 Total 8 2 6 9,661 100
Source:
See also List of MPs elected in the 1865 United Kingdom general election 1865 United Kingdom general election in Ireland
Notes
References
Sources and further reading
Roberts, Matthew. "Election Cartoons and Political Communication in Victorian England" Cultural & Social History (2013) 10#3 pp 369–395, covers 1860 to 1890.
External links Spartacus: Political Parties and Election Results