British Reform Act of 1832

Causes. Despite numerous attempts, by the younger William Pitt among others, no important changes had been made in the British constitutional framework since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. For centuries, political tell of Parliament lay in the hands of the landed aristocracy. The mobilize of the ideals of the French Revolution had encouraged place-class advocates of parliamentary reform, who had create a Union for parliamentary straighten out in 1812, but the practices of the French Revolution, according to Woodward, "produced among most propertied Englishmen a particular(a) fear of mob violence." The Industrial Revolution which had begun in the young 18th century had transformed the English economy, as it adoptive methods of push-down list production in its textiles and other industries. Advances in science and engineering helped revolutionize transport and communications in the former(a) 19th century. However, the Napoleonic Wars had strained the British economy, change magnitude the guinea pig debt to record levels, lowered the prices of British farm exports and led to a postwar depression. The faltering economy and the dislocations caused by the factory agreement and the enclosure of farmland incident to the mechanization of agriculture had displaced more small farmers and artisans such as handloom weavers, producing outbreaks of urban riots in 1816-1819 and the sp

The abdication of the French Bourbon King Charles XI in 1830, said Woodward, "caused immense excitement in England and brought a revival of interest in parliamentary reform." According to Hibbert, jackboot opposed it, because it "would destroy the country." Most Tories agreed, even more modernised elements, such as Sir Robert Peel, who opposed the moderate Parliamentary Reform proposal advanced by Lord Charles Grey, the new Whig ready Minister, in 1831.

MacDonagh, Oliver T. Early Victorian Government 1830-1870. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977.

another(prenominal) factor which inhibited fundamental political reform during this full stop was the instability of governing coalitions incident to the decline of the Whigs, split among aristocrats, radicals and Irish nationalists, and divisions within the Tories over trade issues. Hussey said that after 1832, " incomplete Whigs nor Tories believed in the principle of full democratic representation" and "the middle classes . . . were generally unwilling to share their newly-gained privilege with the working classes down the stairs them. The wholesale rejection of Chartism and its democratic demands reflected these upper-class and middle-class attitudes." Modest Parliamentary Reform bills introduced by Whig Sir John Russell in 1852 and 1854 went nowhere. A identical fate doomed a Reform Bill introduced by Conservatives Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli in 1859.

Causes. More than third decades were to pass before conditions were ripe for another round of Parliamentary reform. Aristocratic rule continued in the House of jet under the Whigs in the 1830s and the Conservatives (1841-1846) under Peel. Some minor political reforms were enacted, such as the Municipal Reform Act (1835) which increased democratic representation in local city and town government. The major focus of the reform movement, led by intellectuals such as Jeremy Bentham, shifted to the amelioration of social and economic conditions, which remained miserable for the mass
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