how far did the 1832 Reform Act rectify the defects of the original political system

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Mark Scott

How far did the 1832 Reform Act rectify the defects of the Political System?

As I mentioned earlier, the political system before 1832 was not an effective way of running the country and this was because of the major disadvantages it brought with it. The most important defect in my view was the aspect of representation. For a political system to work then primarily it needs to be fairly balanced and to make sure that every town, city and region had an equal representation with regard to politics. But this simply wasn’t the case, take Scotland for example who returned only 45 out of the 558 members and also five south-western counties elected made up a quarter of the entire House of Commons. These two examples really outline just how unfair the system actually was and that the uneven distribution of seats was going to have a negative effect on how Britain was being ran. The system basically did not fully represent the population as a whole and as the population was continuing to increase, it was becoming more evident that this was going to cause a significant problem to the unreformed political system. Another major defect was the voting qualification system that was in place at the time. There were different qualification rules that applied to different boroughs in Britain and as there wasn’t an overall rule that applied to everyone, there were obviously going to be disadvantaged people and disadvantaged boroughs. In Northampton for example, householders who paid local taxes were eligible to vote and this rule is automatically excluding people who didn’t own a house and also people who were quite poor. But people who lived in places like Liverpool and Coventry could only vote if they had been given freedom of the town or had gained it through inheritance or purchase. So from this, it is quite easy to see that you could easily lose your right to vote if you moved for example and because there was no universal voting qualification it was extremely hard to maintain a well ordered political system whilst under these complex voting variations. On top of these fairly important defects, the political system also had a number of loopholes which could easily be exploited by powerful and even wealthy people. Under this system, there was no secret ballot so people had to publicly announce their vote. Voting even today is seen as a relatively personal topic and that’s why discretion is vital. By knowing who people have voted for, it can ultimately cause a whole host of problems and violent behaviour often erupted amongst the voters. Another loophole the political system had was the fact that there was no electoral register, and this to me is quite an important thing to have if you want to run a country successfully. By having no record of who was voting you can imagine just how easy it was for people to impersonate others in order to receive multiple voting.  This loophole also allowed people to be easily bribed into voting for a specific person so the voting system as a whole was not exactly representative of the opinions that the voters had. It was basically all to do with money and as some people had it and some people needed it, it was a perfect opportunity for electoral candidates to gain power and for poorer people to pay debts or bills. This may have worked to people’s advantage but people should not gain from something that is ultimately corrupt.

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But despite having a corrupt political system in place, it was other aspects that influenced people towards a change in how the country was run. Some of the events that led up to the Reform Act eventually being passed were in effect, quite significant as they ultimately helped towards a reformed political system. One aspect that played a big part in changing British politics were foreign influences. These influences ultimately came in the form of revolutions and one particular Prime Minister was very aware of what effects that could have in Britain. During Lord Liverpool’s reign as Prime Minister, he ...

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