United Kingdom general election 1868 in Ireland

The Representation of the People (Ireland) Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict c 49) was an

Act of Parliament Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation, are texts of law passed by the Legislature, legislative body of a jurisdiction (often a parliament or council). In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

. The Act did not alter the overall distribution of parliamentary seats in Ireland. It was originally proposed to merge twelve smaller boroughs into six pairs on the model of Scottish

district of burghs The Act of Union 1707 and pre-Union Scottish legislation provided for 14 Members of Parliament (MPs) from Scotland to be elected from districts of burghs. All the parliamentary burghs ( burghs represented in the pre-Union Parliament of Scotla ...

and Welsh contributory boroughs, with the freed-up seats being transferred to the six most populous county constituencies. This was rejected by Parliament, although the act as passed did alter the boundaries of those

parliamentary borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

s which were also

municipal borough Municipal boroughs were a type of local government district which existed in England and Wales between 1835 and 1974, in Northern Ireland from 1840 to 1973 and in the Republic of Ireland from 1840 to 2002. Broadly similar structures existed in S ...

s, extending the parliamentary boundary to include all the municipal boundary.Representation of the People (Ireland) Act 1868 §9 Only 11 of Ireland's 33 parliamentary boroughs were municipal boroughs under the

Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840 The Municipal Corporations Act (Ireland) 1840 (3 & 4 Vict. c. 108), ''An Act for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations in Ireland'', was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 10 August 1840. It was one of the Municipal Corporati ...

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