The Reform Act altered the system of political representation in Great Britain by extending the franchise to members of the middle class and middle-class controlled cities, thus increasing their influence within Parliament, while weakening the power of both the peers and the monarchy.
Through almost a century and a half, the mechanism of Great Britain’s unwritten
Each borough retained its own particular tradition for choosing its representatives. “Pocket boroughs” voted at the beck and call of their wealthy patrons; corporation boroughs were in the careful hands of small groups of leading town fathers. Democratic boroughs, such as Preston, experienced violent electioneering, since their entire adult male populations possessed the vote. The borough franchise was a matter of local “liberty” and custom rather than of parliamentary statute.
The English county franchise, on the other hand, was somewhat more uniform; since 1432, each forty-shilling freeholder (the owner of land worth that much in annual rental) had had the right to vote. By the early nineteenth century, this provision would have created virtual universal manhood suffrage in the counties if the vast majority had been freeholders. Most residents were leaseholders, tenants, or day laborers and were thus excluded from the franchise. This exclusion was the result of the enclosure movement of the previous century, which had deprived many of their land.
This diverse system had come under repeated attack during the later years of the eighteenth century. Some reformers argued simply that the democratic element of the “mixed” British constitution,
The French Revolution (1789) briefly inflamed the British reform spirit, only to squelch it after the worst abuses of the revolution became known. Calls for reform became associated with the guillotine and France’s Reign of Terror. When Britain and France went to war in 1793, a strong political reaction against reform set in. As an embattled island, standing at times alone against the Napoleonic empire, Britain seemed to require political stability rather than change. Thus, the social processes that literally altered the British landscape and contributed greatly to the ultimate military triumph in 1815 remained unreflected in the country’s political structure. By 1820, however, reform was once again before the public consciousness and political radicals, moderate Whigs, and ambitious industrialists all clamored in a multitude of ways for a fundamental change in the political system.
The practical problem was that if a far-reaching political shift were to come about, barring revolution, it had to take place inside Parliament itself, and that would require members of Parliament to vote themselves out of power. This situation explains, as readily as any abstract principle, why men who had tackled other difficult political questions were unwilling to take on a measure of general political reform. However, if nothing were done, there was the intermittent fear that the patience of the unenfranchised—especially members of the new industrial classes—might wear out and that the nineteenth century, like the seventeenth, would become a century of revolution.
King William IV.
Opposition to the old electoral system arose gradually from several overlapping sources. Democratic radicals, such as William Cobbett
Several events led to increase the hitherto lagging agitation. One of these events was the 1829 crisis over Roman Catholic emancipation
The success of O’Connell and the success of his Catholic Association’s methods of mass agitation led advocates of parliamentary reform to form similar groups. The July Revolution of 1830 in France and similar revolts on the Continent moved many British people to push for reform in order to avoid revolution in Great Britain. This fear was increased by a few minor outbreaks in England itself. The death of King George IV
Wellington’s
On March 1, 1831, Lord John Russell’s
New extraparliamentary organizations urging acceptance of reform included the Political Unions, modeled after O’Connell’s Catholic Association, which were organized throughout England and Scotland, especially in the large cities. The first and most important was the Birmingham Union led by Thomas Attwood
In the parliamentary debates on the bill, the Tories, led by Sir Robert Peel
In the heated political campaign that followed, elements advocating reform won a sweeping victory, and the Tories lost more than one hundred seats in Parliament. Consequently, a similar Second Reform Bill was introduced on June 24, 1831, and passed by more than one hundred votes, although a Tory amendment giving the vote to tenant-farmers, often dependent on aristocrats, was passed over government opposition. However, the House of Lords rejected the bill on October 8, 1831. The action of the House of Lords unleashed a wave of protest from the Political Unions and some outbreaks of violence.
The Whig government then introduced a Third Reform Bill, which saved a few smaller boroughs and allowed some freemen without property to retain their votes. This bill passed the Commons by a larger margin, 324 to 162, and was sent up to the Lords. There it passed its second reading by nine votes, but an amendment was carried that would have split the enfranchising clauses from the disenfranchising clauses on the final vote. Earl Grey
The effects of the Reform Act of 1832 were not as radical as many of its supporters had hoped or its opponents had feared. The total electorate was increased by only 50 percent. The middle classes and middle-class-controlled cities were largely enfranchised and increased their influence in Parliament. Although some workers maintained their votes, the working classes on a whole lost both votes and influence. The aristocracy also lost some power, but the increased rural vote, which they controlled, maintained their dominant role in politics.
The end of the so-called rotten boroughs lessened political corruption to some extent. The redistribution of seats removed the most glaring inequities, but it came nowhere near equalizing districts. The organized, popular-based agitation of the Political Unions set a precedent for future political activity. The Reform Act strengthened the Whigs, but the continually growing middle-class influence transformed their party into the Liberal Party
The monarchy
By engaging the electorate, by imposing uniform franchise requirements, and by instituting a system of registering electors, the Reform Act encouraged not only the strengthening of the parliamentary party but also the beginning of a national party organization. The more clearly the House of Commons could be seen to reflect the will of the British people, the less plausible could a monarch oppose it in the name of the “true” interests of his or her subjects. Thus the Reform Bill clearly weakened the political influence of the monarch.
The bill also had a comparable effect upon the House of Lords. The course of the struggle had demonstrated that, in a showdown, the House of Commons was the more powerful of the two chambers as well as the arena in which the more vital political personalities engaged in debate. The bill had also very much limited the influence that the peers could exercise as borough mongers with numerous House of Commons seats at their disposal.
At the same time that the Reform Bill had weakened the prestige of king, peers, and gentry, it had notably strengthened the position of the new custodians of commercial and industrial wealth. They now shared with old-line oligarchs the rule of the kingdom. The fundamental political imbalance caused by industrialization had largely been rectified, and it is no coincidence that these elements would reshape British politics in their own images.
It was the peaceful manner in which the bill was passed by the force of public opinion and extraparliamentary agitation that made the Reform Bill a landmark toward full democracy. Perhaps the ultimate significance of the bill lies in that it was passed at all, and without revolution. It proved, as Peel
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Arnstein, Walter L. “Reform or Revolution.” In Britain Yesterday and Today: 1830 to the Present. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1994. This chapter provides a concise narrative of the issues surrounding the 1832 Reform Act and places the act into a historical context of British and European development. -
Burton, Anthony. William Cobbett, Englishman: A Biography. London: Aurum Press, 1997. Biography of one of the leading radical supports of the Reform Act. -
Dinwiddy, John R. From Luddism to the First Reform Bill: Reform in England, 1810-32. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. This work places the Reform Act into the context of working-class struggle for rights within British society. As such it provides a critical assessment of the Reform Act. -
Jupp, Peter. British Politics on the Eve of Reform: The Duke of Wellington’s Administration, 1829-1830. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Analysis of the British monarchy, office of prime minister, Parliament, and other political institutions on the eve of Britain’s adoption of the Reform Act of 1832. -
Parry, Johnathon P. The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993. Identifies the Reform Act as the precursor of the rise of Liberal government in Britain and asssesses the act and its provisions in terms of their influence on the political composition of British government and as a model for further reform during the early and middle Victorian period. -
Phillips, John A., and Charles Wetherell. “The Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Political Modernization of England.” The American Historical Review 100 (April, 1995): 411-436. Details the impact of the Reform Act of 1832 on the development of political parties during the nineteenth century. -
Scherer, Paul. Lord John Russell: A Biography. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1999. Scholarly biography of the great Liberal leader who supported the Reform Act and later served as prime minister during a period of further reforms. -
Seymour, Charles. Electoral Reform in England and Wales. London: Oxford University Press, 1925. Despite its age, Seymour’s work remains the most thorough and extensive study of the provisions of the Reform Act. It takes the provisions of the Reform Bill, point by point, discussing the old electoral law, the debates, and the new provisions. -
Smith, E. A., ed. Reform or Revolution? A Diary of Reform in England, 1830-2. Wolfeboro Falls, N.H.: Alan Sutton, 1992. Focuses on the critical period 1830 through 1832 during which the Reform Bill was before the British parliament. It provides a critical analysis of the events surrounding the passage of the act and detailed coverage of the most important questions of reform raised by the act.
British Parliament Passes the Six Acts
London’s Cato Street Conspirators Plot Assassinations
British Parliament Repeals the Combination Acts
Roman Catholic Emancipation
British Parliament Passes the Factory Act
British Parliament Passes Municipal Corporations Act
Chartist Movement
British Parliament Repeals the Corn Laws
British Parliament Passes the Matrimonial Causes Act
British Parliament Passes the Reform Act of 1867
British Parliament Passes the Franchise Act of 1884
William Cobbett; Charles Grey; Sir Robert Peel; John Russell; Duke of Wellington; William IV.