Investigated the socioeconomic composition of the 1841-1847 British House of Commons and the political behavior of the men who sat in it. For each member of parliament, data were collected on personal background, constituency, political career, social position, and professional and business interests. The information on political behavior includes party affiliation, roll call responses in 186 individual parliamentary votes (called 'divisions'), and the parliament members' ranking on 24 cumulative scales derived from voting data to allow generalizations about voting patterns.