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BRITISH REFORM ACTS OF 1832 AND 1867 This resea

BRITISH REFORM ACTS OF 1832 AND 1867

This research paper discusses the causes and consequences of the Reform Act of 1832 and the Reform Act of 1867 which were enacted by the Parliament of Great Britain.

The passage of the Reform Act of 1832 came about because of a combination of fundamental long-term political, economic and social changes related to the effects of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution on the expectations and structure of British society, the inability of postwar Tory governments to readjust political institutions to those effects, including rising social unrest, and an unusual set of immediate circumstances, some fortuitous, which enabled the Whigs to assume power in 1832 and to generate a strong political consensus for Parliamentary reform. The Reform Act of 1832 did not eliminate the political control of the established order, but by bringing the middle class into the governing process enabled Britain to avoid more violent change and set the stage for more extensive reforms later.

The Reform Act of 1867 was caused by rising prosperity and the growing power of the working classes and their trade unions, which were sufficiently strong to persuade centrist political leaders, especially Benjamin Disraeli, that they could safely and must politically broaden suffrage further and enact other reforms to make Parliament more representative. Those reforms were also incomplete, but together with later reforms, they made British government reasonably democratic, revolutionized party politics and made possible other economic and social reforms.

Causes. Despite numerous attempts, by the younger William Pitt among others, no important changes had been made in the British constitutional framework since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. For centuries, political control of Parliament lay in the hands of the landed aristocracy. The spread of the ideals of the French Revolution had e...

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BRITISH REFORM ACTS OF 1832 AND 1867 This resea. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:54, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708276.html