In August 1831 Joseph Hume, the radical MP for Middlesex, introduced a little-known amendment to the reform bill. He proposed that nineteen extra MPs should be added to the House of Commons for the colonies (four for British India, eight for the Crown Colonies, three each for British America and the West Indies, and one for the Channel Islands). All those eligible for jury service would constitute the electorate in these colonies, and their chosen representatives would sit in Parliament for a guaranteed three years. Somewhat surprisingly, Hume's amendment was supported, not by his radical or Whig colleagues, but by a rather motley collection of ultra Tories: the Marquis of Chandos, Sir John Malcolm and Sir Charles Wetherell amongst the most prominent of those who seemed to have little problem with extending the vote to thousands overseas whilst resisting the £10 franchise at home. Less surprisingly, the amendment was defeated, and although the Duke of Richmond tried to press it on his cabinet colleagues later in the year as they drafted the third version of their reform bill, the attempt to introduce direct representation of the colonies was unsuccessful in 1832, just as it had been when advocated sixty years earlier by principled Whigs such as George Grenville, and as it was later in the nineteenth century when put forward by cunning Tories such as George Curzon.

Hume's amendment, however, is more than a curious footnote to the history of parliamentary representation.