page_title: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
section_title: Political process
hierarchical_section_title: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland / Age of Reform: 1820–1837 / Age of Reform / Political process
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail from the picture commemorating the passing of the Great Reform Act in 1832. It depicts the first session of the new House of Commons on 5 February 1833 held in St Stephen's Chapel which was destroyed by fire in 1834.
context_page_description: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was a sovereign state that existed between 1801 and 1922. It was established by the Acts of Union 1800, which merged the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland into a unified state. The establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922 led to the country later being renamed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1927, which continues to exist in the present day.
  The United Kingdom, having financed the European coalition that defeated France during the Napoleonic Wars, developed a large Royal Navy that enabled the British Empire to become the foremost world power for the next century. The Crimean War with Russia was a relatively small operation in a century where Britain was largely at peace with the Great Powers. Rapid industrialisation that began in the decades prior to the state's formation continued up until the mid-19th century. The Great Irish Famine, exacerbated by government inaction in the mid-19th century, led to demographic collapse in much of Ireland and increased calls for Irish land reform.
context_section_description: A weak ruler as regent (1811–20) and king (1820–30), George IV let his ministers take full charge of government affairs. He was a deeply unpopular playboy. When he tried to get Parliament to pass a law allowing him to divorce his wife Queen Caroline, public opinion strongly supported her. His younger brother William IV ruled (1830–37), but was little involved in politics.
  After four decades of rule by Pittites and Tories the first breakthrough in reform came in the removal by a Tory government of restrictions on the careers of Protestant Nonconformists in the repeal in 1828 of the laws that required Anglican church membership for many academic and government positions. Much more intense was the long battle over the civil rights of Roman Catholics. Catholic emancipation came in 1829, which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland. Tory Prime Minister Wellington decided that the surging crisis in largely Catholic Ireland necessitated some relief for the Catholics, although he had long opposed the idea. The other main Tory leader was Sir Robert Peel, who suddenly reversed himself on the Catholic issue and was roundly denounced and permanently distrusted by the Ultra Tory faction of die-hards.
  Earl Grey, prime minister from 1830 to 1834, and his rejuvenated Whig Party enacted a series of major reforms: the poor law was updated, child labour restricted and, most important, the Reform Act 1832 refashioned the British electoral system. In 1832 Parliament abolished slavery in the Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The government purchased all the slaves for £20,000,000 (the money went to rich plantation owners who mostly lived in England), and freed the slaves, most of whom were in the Caribbean sugar islands.
  The Whigs became champions of Parliamentary reform by making the Reform Act of 1832 their signature measure. It sharply reduced the numbers of "rotten borough" and "pocket boroughs" (where elections were controlled by powerful families), and instead redistributed seats on the basis of population. It also broadened the franchise, adding 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000 in England and Wales. The main effect of the act was to weaken the power of the landed gentry, and enlarge the power of the professional and business middle-class, which now for the first time had a significant voice in Parliament. However, at this point the great majority of manual workers, clerks and farmers did not have enough property to qualify to vote. Many of them received the vote in 1867. The aristocracy continued to dominate the Church of England, the most prestigious military and naval posts, and high society, but not business, industry or finance. In terms of national governmental policy, the democratic wishes of the entire people had become decisive.
  Most historians emphasise the central importance of the legislation of the 1830s–60s, although there was a dissenting minority of scholars in the 1960s and 1970s who argued against deep meanings of Whiggish progress because each of the reforms was relatively minor in itself. Historian Richard Davis concludes that the scholarship of the 1970s represented "a vindication of the main outlines of the old "Whig interpretation." That is, the Reform Act of 1832 was a response to mounting popular pressure. It was "the culmination of a long historical process, and an important turning point in the emergence of a more liberal and broadly based political system....it deserves its old designation of 'Great.'"
  David Thompson has stressed the revolutionary nature of the entire package of reforms:
  In all these ways—the organization of the new police (by Peel as Home Secretary in the 1820s), the new Poor Law, and in the new municipal councils—the pattern of government in England was changed fundamentally within a single decade. In conjunction with the removal of religious disabilities, these reforms laid the structural foundation for a new kind of State in Britain: a State in which the electoral rights and civil rights of citizens were extended and g
caption: A painting by Sir George Hayter that commemorates the passing of the Reform Act of 1832. It depicts the first session of the newly reformed House of Commons on 5 February 1833. In the foreground, the leading statesmen from the Lords: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845), William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848) and the Whigs on the left; and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) and the Tories on the right.
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