Gibbon sat in the House for some years under patronage.
Gladstone first became a member by presentation to a pocket borough, and later spoke in praise of this method of bringing young men of promise into Parliament.

John Wilson Croker estimated that of six hundred and fifty-eight members of the House of Commons at the end of the eighteenth century, two hundred and seventy-six were returned by patrons.

Men of more independence of mind who could afford to buy seats did so, and many of the reformers--including Burdett, Romilly and Hume--thus sat in the House.
MANUFACTURING CENTRES UNREPRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT It was not so much that the landowning aristocracy were over-represented in Parliament by their control of so many pocket boroughs, as that great manufacturing centres were entirely unrepresented.

The middle-class manufacturers had no means of making their influence felt in the unreformed House of Commons, for towns of such importance as Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham sent no representatives to Parliament.

This meant that Parliament was out of touch with all the industrial life of the nation, and that nothing was done till after the Reform Act in the way of serious industrial legislation.
35 constituencies with hardly any voters at all returned 75 members 46 constituencies with less than 50 voters in each returned 90 " 19 constituencies with less than 100 voters in each returned 37 " 26 constituencies with less than 200 voters in each returned 52 " 84 male electors in other constituencies returned 157 " The Reform Act of 1832 changed all this.