How successful was the Reform Act in rectifying defects in the political system?

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 How successful was the Reform Act in rectifying defects in the political system?

The 1832 Reform Act was moderately successful when it came to resolving the inconveniences in the political system at the time. King William IV passed the Reform Act on 7th June 1832. Men such as John Wilkes and Major John Cartwright had made countless demands for the reform of Parliament in the 1760’s, there had been no organized and structured reform made in the eighteenth century. Unquestionably after the French Revolution, no Prime Minister in Britain was prepared to advocate for parliamentary reform. The Whig opposition, nevertheless, took the issue as one of their electoral platforms and Earl Grey began to press for a major Reform Bill as early as 1793. When the Reform Act was passed it received a mixed judgement as to whether it was successful in correcting the blemishes that were previously, evidently existent in the political system.

There were copious amounts of problems with the political system. The distribution of seats was irregular which meant that various towns and cities either had too little or too much representation. There were many different franchises in boroughs so that some boroughs had high numbers of voters and others scarcely had any. When it came to people voting, it was not a secret ballot so intimidation, threats and bribery could occur from landowners, in order for the voting to go the way the landowners wanted it to. Voting qualifications were put in to place, which meant that many people were incapable of voting, like they would wish. The extent of the defects in the standing system were quite prominent. The seat distribution within Parliament was irregular before the 1832 Reform Act. The total of county seats came to 186 and the total of borough seats came to 447, the remaining 5 went to universities. This shows that there was much more representation available in boroughs than there was in counties. There were many problems with the standing system, the electorate qualifications meant that not many people had the right to vote; less than 5% of the population had the right and approximately 11% of men had the right to do so if they were over the age of 21. They had to own or rent a house worth at least £10 a year if they were voting in a borough, if they were living in a county then if they were a freeholder of land then they had to have 40 shilling a year of rental value, copyholders had to have £10 a year of rental value and leaseholders had to have £50 worth a year with a lease of at least 21 years. The 1832 Reform Act allowed people vote more than before therefore proving that the Reform Act was a positive change to the system.

There were many motivations for a new Reform Act to be passed. As the population was increasing there was an ever growing need for modification to the standing system. The industrial revolution accentuated the irregular geographic distribution of the population and therefore disturbed the regular distribution of county and borough representation. New towns like Leeds were left without representation. Roman Catholic emancipation caused a split between the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel and the right-wing ultras. The Birmingham Political Union made an attempt to unify middle class and working class pressure for parliamentary reforms. The uprising threat of revolution was also a major motivation for the government to pass the Reform Act. The Peterloo Massacre, originally was meant to be a meeting but consequently turned in to a riot, striving for radical parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws, eleven people were killed and over 400 people were injured. If a Reform Act was not passed soon then it was possible that another incident such as this may have occurred in the near future and the government could not risk this possibility.

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Due to previous riots and problems, like Peterloo, the Reform Act was desperately needed to rectify all the problems in the political system and there were many factors that pushed government to pass a new bill. William IV succeeded George IV who died in 1830 and due to this change of monarchy a general election took place; this therefore meant that some anti-reformers lost their seats. The Duke of Wellington’s government resigned and was replaced by a Whig administration, headed by Lord Grey, which pledged to introduce parliamentary reform. Lord Grey wanted to pass the Reform Act as growing ...

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