The issue of parliamentary reform on England during the 1820s

Abstract

This study is an attempt to determine how far parliamentary reform remained an important issue, and what arguments were offered for and against it, during a decade which did not produce the sort of major agitations in favour of the measure seen in 1816-19. Particular events and general trends characteristic of the decade are examined to see what effect they had on a reform debate which, though never the overriding obsession of the nation, did not disappear altogether. It is shown how the Queen Caroline affair, the largest mobilisation of anti-government opinion between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Reform Bill crisis, both provided a platform for reformist argument and to some extent directed attention away from purely political issues. Another section focuses on the effect of the severe agricultural distress of the early twenties on farming and landlord opinion and demonstrates that for a time at least reform was both widely discussed and widely supported in this sector of the community, in particular at the series of county meetings held in the first halves of 1821, 1822 and 1823. The attitude of the parliamentary Whig party to the issue is also examined, and their continuing difficulties over establishing a universally accepted party consensus on how, and even whether, parliamentary reform should be adopted as 'official' party policy are stressed. In a section dealing with the attitudes of the working classes and those who sought to influence them, the relationship of reform with such ideas and activities as Infidelity, Co-operation and trades unionism is looked at, and an attempt is made to gauge the extent to which Radicalism, or at least political feeling, revived during the severe slump in the textile-producing areas in 1826-7. Other important and interrelated facets of the period - the "liberalisation" of the Tory Government from 1822, the debate on Catholic Emancipation, the spread of education, the wider diffusion of general and political knowledge by mass print media expanding in size and sophistication, and the apparent increasing assertiveness of public opinion - are also dealt with, and the double-edged nature of their effect on the case for reform illustrated. The several attempts at partial representative or electoral change are described and their role in the contemporary reform debate is assessed, as are the initiatives on the closely related subjects of economical reform and retrenchment in government. The general conclusion of the study is that reform in the twenties by no means sank into oblivion. Conditions were against its assuming dominating importance, probably the most influential of those conditions being the comparative prosperity of the decade. However, several influential publicists for whom reform was "the one thing needful" continued to be active, and the mass enthusiasm of 1830-2 did not spring from nothing.