United Kingdom

The Reform Act of 1832 (see Reform Bill) was in no sense a democratic measure. It defined more clearly than ever before the distinction between those who were and those who were not sanctioned to wield power, and it did so entirely in terms of property ownership, entrenching the power of landed wealth as well as acknowledging new sources of power in the middle classes and the consequent claims upon the rights and virtues of their new political identity. The bill entailed a substantial redistribution of parliamentary constituencies and a change in the franchise. The total electorate was increased by 57 percent to 217,000, but artisans, labourers, and large sections of the lower middle classes still remained disenfranchised. No radical demands were met, even though the manner of passing the bill had demonstrated the force of organized opinion in the country, particularly in the large cities, which were also now given representation.

Returned with a huge majority in the general election of December 1832, the Whigs carried out a number of other important reforms. A statute in 1833 ended slavery in the British colonies; in that same year the East India Company lost its monopoly of the China trade and became a purely governing body with no commercial functions.

The new Poor Law of 1834 turned out to be an unpopular measure in many parts of the country, however, and led to violent outbreaks of disorder. Its basic principle—that “outdoor poor relief” (i.e., outside the workhouse) should cease and that conditions in workhouses should be “less eligible” (i.e., less inviting) than the worst conditions in the labour market outside—was as bitterly attacked by writers such as Thomas Carlyle as it was by the workingmen themselves.

All of these contentious issues multiplied after 1836, when a financial crisis ushered in a period of economic depression accompanied by a series of bad harvests. Social conflict, never far from the surface, became more open and dramatic. Grey’s successor, William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, proved incapable of finding effective answers to any of the pressing financial, economic, and social questions of the day, but he did prove adept in his dealings with Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne in 1837.

Queen Victoria's coronation, 1837.Photos.com/Jupiterimages

Chartism and the Anti-Corn Law League

As the economic skies darkened after 1836 and prophets such as Carlyle anticipated cataclysmic upheaval, the two most disgruntled groups in society were the industrial workers and their employers. Each group developed new forms of organization, and each turned from local to national extra-parliamentary action. The two most important organizations were the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League. Chartism drew on a multiplicity of workers’ grievances, extending working-class consciousness as it grew. The Anti-Corn Law League, founded as a national organization in Manchester in 1839, was the spearhead of middle-class energies, and it enjoyed the advantage not only of lavish funds but also of a single-point program—the repeal of the restrictive Corn Laws.

Chartist demonstration, Kennington Common, 1848; illustration from The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (1900) by Robert Wilson.From The Life and Times of Queen Victoria, volume II, by Robert Wilson (Cassell and Company, Limited, 1900)

Taking its name from the People’s Charter published in London in May 1838, Chartism aimed at parliamentary reform. The charter contained six points, all of them political and all with a radical pedigree: (1) annual parliaments, (2) universal male suffrage, (3) the ballot, (4) no property qualifications for members of Parliament, (5) payment of members of Parliament, and (6) equal electoral districts. These were old demands that would have been supported by 18th-century radicals. Localized Poor Law and factory reform agitations centring on such grievances were subsumed in Chartism because of its commitment to national political action. However, for a variety of reasons—not least that the politicians had been able again to convey the sense that the state was benign and neutral and not, as Chartists perceived it, repressive and sectional—the mass movement of Chartism ultimately failed.