Why was there a reform act in 1832? What were the consequences of the Act?

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James Cox                                                          Tuesday, 26 November 2002

     

     Why was there a reform act in 1832? What were the consequences of the Act?

        The Whigs defeated the Tories in the 1830 elections, under Lord Grey, and were asked to form a government. At this time, there were numerous rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs, in which people (the working class) lived in terribly unhealthy and very bad conditions. There was disease, over-crowding and a lot of dirt and mess on the streets and in people’s houses. They were parliamentary constituencies with a small population, and were often effectively owned by a single powerful landowner.  In these boroughs, there were no voters.  In the 1830’s, only a small number of people voted, and there was no uniform franchise. In some constituencies, voters had to own a freehold worth 40 shillings a year and seats were not distributed according to population, so it was very unrepresentative. There was a growth in the population at this time and an emergence of industry, these only increased the inequality in seat distribution. Growing cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham weren’t represented at all in Parliament. Many people said that the political system only represented a few, and those few used it to improve their own lives but not the lives of others.

        Many people, but mostly the radicals thought that the poor economic conditions were a result of corruption and political mismanagement, and were very unhappy about this. In Spa Fields, London in 1816, Radicals followed their leader, Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt and attacked the injustice of an unreformed political system at a large, peaceful meeting. On another attempted peaceful protest against corruption in the government, in St Peters Field in 1819, 11 radicals were killed by yeomanry following the unsuccessful attempted arrest of Henry Hunt.  The Radicals were further influenced by the revolution in France in 1830. The removal of Charles X was welcomed by many radicals in Britain as the destruction of a corrupt political order.

        Some of the population believed that the French monarchy had fallen because of a failure to recognise genuine popular electoral grievances, and surely the potential existed in Britain for the same to happen. The whole issue of reform was heightened by events in France in July 1830. Charles X had ruled in a heavy handed manner and had refused to recognise the results of sweeping election gains for the Liberal opposition in 1829. In desperation, Charles issued the Ordinances of St Cloud which sparked a revolution in the French capital in July 1830. This worried the government.

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        People in England weren’t the only people pressing for reform. The Irish were too. The Church of England was very anti-Catholicism, the Church and the Monarchy were against Catholic Emancipation, but the Whigs weren’t. However, it was seen that the wider population of England didn’t like the idea. In the 1807 election, the Whigs were heckled with cries of ‘no popery’. However, in Ireland, the majority being Catholic, Catholic Emancipation was very much an issue. In 1823 Daniel O’Connell and Richard Shiel formed the Catholic Association of Ireland. There main aim was to achieve emancipation. It had membership by charging ...

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