ncouraged middle-class advocates of Parliamentary reform, who had formed a Union for Parliamentary Reform in 1812, but the practices of the French Revolution, according to Woodward, "produced among most propertied Englishmen a peculiar fear of mob violence." The Industrial Revolution which had begun in the late 18th century had transformed the English economy, as it adopted methods of mass production in its textiles and other industries. Advances in science and engineering helped revolutionize transport and communications in the early 19th century. However, the Napoleonic Wars had strained the British economy, increased the national debt to record levels, lowered the prices of British farm exports and led to a postwar depression. The faltering economy and the dislocations caused by the factory system and the enclosure of farmland incident to the mechanization of agriculture had displaced many small farmers and artisans such as handloom weavers, producing outbreaks of urban riots in 1816-1819 and the spread of radical protest movements, including the anti-industrial Luddites. Improvements in public health led to a decline in infant mortality and control of diseases such as smallpox, which produced large population increases and migration from rural to urban areas where municipal services were unable to keep up with rising demand for basic services such as sanitation and running water. According to Hussey, "lacking property, education, and the vote, the working masses found it an impossible task to influence a government of rich men based on an undemocratic and unrepresentative House of Commons which, in an age of great social misery, ignored the views and feelings of the common people."
In domestic affairs, the Tory governments of the 1820s had more pressing priorities than Parliamentary Reform, including currency stabilization, the debate over protectionist Corn Laws vs. freer trade, and Catholic Emancipation, criminal law and pol...