The Great Reform Act (1832)

The House of Commons (engraving 1808)

You can listen here to a discussion of the Reform Act on Melvyn Bragg's 'In Our Time' programme. This especially indebted to the following:

Edward Evans, The Forging of the Modern State, 3rd edn. (Longman, 2001)
Antonia Fraser, Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832 (W&N, 2013)
Boyd Hilton, A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People? (Oxford, 2006)
Edward Pearce, Reform! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act (Pimlico, 2004)

The pressure for reform

After Catholic emancipation the demand for parliamentary reform, which had been growing since the 1790s became irresistible, among many sections of the middle and working classes. Influential provincial journals like the Manchester Guardian and Leeds Mercury were joined in their advocacy of reform by sections of the former Tory press like the Nottingham Journal. In Birmingham, a city of small-scale units of production, Thomas Attwood  founded a ‘General Political Union between the Lower and Middle Classes of the People’ in December 1829. Its main platform - the ‘Brummagen remedy’ - was currency reform - the provision of readier credit and bigger domestic markets for small masters. To the alarm of the king political unions sprang up all over the country, attracting huge crowds to political rallies. The Whig peer Lord Holland feared that:

‘If the great mass of the middle classes are bent upon that method of enforcing their views, there is not in the nature of society any real force that can prevent them.’

The fall of Wellington’s government
The Tories under the Duke of Wellington won the general election of July 1830 - but only just - and then they shot themselves in the foot. On 2 November 1830, the duke, made a disastrous speech in the Lords in which he argued that the state of representation could not be improved, and that the system of electoral representation commanded the ‘entire confidence’ of the nation’. He believed that his uncompromising stand would encourage the forces of Toryism to rally around him, but he had failed to appreciate the depth of the reform movement in the country. 

On 15 November the government was defeated on a minor financial motion. Wellington resigned. and on 16 November William IV asked the Whig leader, Charles, 2nd Earl Grey to form a government. The Whigs has been out of power since 1807, and this was now their moment. There was certainly going to be a major change, as the new government was committed to (modest) parliamentary reform.

Charles, 2nd Earl Grey
Prime Minister 1830-4
Public Domain

On 30 December the diarist Charles Greville wrote:

 ‘I never remember times like these, nor read of such – the terror and the lively expectation which prevail and the way in which people’s minds are turned backwards and forwards, from France to Ireland then range excursively to Poland or Piedmont, and fix again on the burnings, riots and executions here.’

He was referring to the July Revolution in France, continuing unrest in Ireland and Italy, the Polish revolt against Russia, and the Swing Riots in Britain. These were troubled times.

The bill introduced

On 1 March 1831 Lord John Russell introduced his Reform Bill to Commons. It contained three cardinal principles: the disenfranchisement of rotten boroughs, the enfranchisement of new towns and areas of growing population (eight new London seats and seats for Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham), and a common £10 household franchise for the boroughs.

Peel, who favoured reform, but a much more cautious one, was outraged by Russell's proposals.

Let us never be tempted to resign the well-tempered freedom which we enjoy, in the ridiculous pursuit of the wild liberty which France has established.

Once again, as with Catholic Emancipation, he had positioned himself against a reforming measure.

On 23 March the bill passed the Commons by a majority of one (302/301). This was nothing like sufficient to take up the the Lords. It would have to be put to the country.

The election of 1831

The general election of April was, in effect, a referendum on the bill - something unprecedented in British history. It showed an irresistible momentum for reform as many Tories lost their seats. Of the thirty-four English county members who had voted against Russell’s proposals only six retained their seats. Almost all the 'popular' constituencies (those with large electorates) returned reformers. Virtually the only Tories who were returned were those for closed boroughs. Wellington became an object of hatred and abuse for sections of the public, and on two occasions the windows of his London residence, Apsley House, were stoned.

There were those who believed that Russell's proposals did not go far enough. In April 1831 a National Union of the Working Classes was forged in London, agitating for complete male suffrage. The size of political rallies in 1830 and 1831 suggests that working-class support for democracy was growing. But the Reform Bill, as it stood, had nothing in it for them. The Whigs had raised expectations they would not be able to fulfil.

The Lords reject the bill

On 24 June Russell introduced a revised reform bill. On 22 September it was sent up to the Lords. On 8 October after five days debate the Lords rejected the bill by forty-one votes (199/158). Twenty-one of the bishops voted against it; if they had voted for it, it would have passed by a majority of one.

Riots and disturbances

In the country at large, the Lords’ rejection provoked immediate and prolonged opposition. As many as 150,000 people are estimated to have attended monster meetings of the Birmingham Political Union. There were a series of violent incidents in the country, most notably riots in Bristol and Nottingham.

The Bristol Riots, October 1831
Public Domain

The Lords reject the bill - again

On 12 December: Russell introduced his bill for the third time - with a few concessions to win over peers worried about the risk of civil war. He saved some condemned constituencies, abandoned proposals to increase the size of the Commons, and allowed resident freemen to keep their votes. This was carried on the second reading by a majority of 162.

On 13 April 1832  the Lords passed the second reading of the bill by a majority of nine (184/175). Then on 7 May during the committee stage, the Lords passed what the government saw as a wrecking amendment. On 9 May Grey and the cabinet resigned over William IV’s refusal to create enough peers to get the bill through. 

The 'Days of May'

This set off the crisis known as the ‘Days of May'. Mass demonstrations were held in the country - Birmingham, Manchester, London. In Birmingham Thomas Attwood hinted at armed insurrection. On 12 May the radical Francis Place suggested a run on the banks: ‘To stop the duke [of Wellington], go for gold’.  This slogan was posted up on London walls within twenty-four hours.

The king tried to cobble together another Wellington administration, but Peel, remembering his difficulties over Catholic emancipation, refused to take office. He now believed that reform was inevitable but that he was not the man to bring it about. The king therefore had to send for Grey again. On 18 May William reluctantly agreed to the creation of Whig peers. 

The bill passed

This frightened the Lords into passing the bill, with only twenty-two voting against it. On 7 June it received the royal assent. The news was greeted by banquets, illuminations and ringing of church bells. In the subsequent general election, the Whigs won 483 seats, the Tories only 175.

The provisions of the act were modest. It disenfranchised the more notorious pocket boroughs and created new parliamentary constituencies, notably Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Birmingham. The right to vote in the counties was extended beyond the 40 shilling freeholders to other forms of land tenure. In the boroughs there was a uniform franchise of £10 householders. 

The total electorate increased by 50 per cent. In England and Wales 217,000 voters were added to the electorate of 435,000 (out of a population of Great Britain of 13.4m). About one Englishman in five, one Scotsman in eight and one Irishman in twenty now had the vote. 

Conclusion

There are two views about the Reform Act.

1. It was the 'great Whig betrayal' that increased the proportion of adult males enfranchised in England and Wales by a mere five per cent, and left the working classes still without a vote, even though they had been among the foremost campaigners for reform.
2. Though a very modest reform it showed that the British constitution could be changed. Other reforms were bound to follow.