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Reform Act 1832

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The Representation of the People Act 1832, commonly known as the Reform Act 1832, was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of the United Kingdom. According to its preamble, the act was designed to "take effectual Measures for correcting diverse Abuses that have long prevailed in the Choice of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament."

The Reform Act was proposed by the Whigs led by the Prime Minister Lord Grey. The legislation met with significant opposition from the Tories, especially in the House of Lords. Nevertheless, as a result of public pressure, the bill eventually passed. The act granted seats in the House of Commons to large cities that sprang up during the Industrial Revolution, and took away seats from boroughs which had very small populations (these boroughs were often called "rotten boroughs"). The act also increased the number of individuals entitled to vote, increasing the size of electorate from between 50 to 80 percent. 653,000 adult males (around one in five) were able to vote after the passage of the act in a population of some 14 million. The Act also specifically disenfranchised women, sparking the British suffrage movement.

The act was, in full, entitled: "An Act to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales." Its formal short title and citation of the act was: "Representation of the People Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. IV, c. 45)." The act only applied in England and Wales; separate reform bills were passed for Scotland and Ireland Other reform measures were passed later during the 19th century; as a result, the Reform Act 1832 is sometimes called the First Reform Act, or the Great Reform Act.

Reform during the 1820s

Since the House of Commons regularly rejected direct challenges to the system of representation by large majorities, supporters of reform had to content themselves with more modest measures. The Whig Lord John Russell brought forward one such measure in 1820, proposing the disfranchisement of the notoriously corrupt borough of Grampound in Cornwall. He suggested that the borough's two seats be transferred to the city of Leeds. Tories in the House of Lords agreed to the disfranchisement of the borough, but refused to accept the precedent of directly transferring its seats to an industrial city. Instead, they modified the proposal so that two further seats were given to Yorkshire, the county in which Leeds is situated. In this form, the bill passed both houses and became law. In 1828, Lord John Russell suggested that Parliament repeat the idea by abolishing the corrupt boroughs of Penryn and East Retford, and by transferring their seats to Manchester and Birmingham. This time, however, the House of Lords rejected his proposals. In 1830, Russell proposed another, similar scheme: the enfranchisement of Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, and the disfranchisement of the next three boroughs found guilty of corruption; again, the proposal was rejected.

Support for reform came from an unexpected source a faction of the Tory Party in 1829. The Tory government under Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, responding to the danger of civil strife in largely Roman Catholic Ireland, drew up the Catholic Relief Act 1829. This legislation repealed various laws that imposed political disabilities on Roman Catholics, in particular laws that prevented them from becoming members of Parliament. In response, disenchanted Tories who perceived a danger to the established religion came to favour parliamentary reform, in particular the enfranchisement of Manchester, Leeds, and other heavily Protestant cities in northern England.

Effects

Although it did disfranchise several rotten boroughs, the Reform Act did not address all the anomalies in the electoral system. A few small boroughs, such as Totnes in Devon and Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, were spared. While nomination boroughs were largely swept away, bribery of the voters remained a problem. As Sir Erskine May observed, "it was too soon evident, that as more votes had been created, more votes were to be sold." Also, the vast majority of the population remained voteless; immediately after the passage of the Great Reform Act, only about 650,000 Englishmen possessed the franchise. The magnitude of the unreformed electorate is difficult to accurately determine, because of a lack of voter registration and because many boroughs were rarely contested. One estimate gives suggests that 400,000 were entitled to vote in 1831, meaning that the Reform Act enlarged the electorate by more than 60%.

Most of the pocket boroughs abolished by the Reform Act belonged to the Tory Party. These losses were somewhat offset by extending the right to vote to tenants-at-will paying an annual rent of £50. This clause, proposed by the Tory Marquess of Chandos, was adopted in the House of Commons despite opposition from the Government. The tenants-at-will enfranchised by the Chandos clause typically voted in accordance with the wishes of their landlords, who in turn normally supported the Tory party. This concession, together with the Whig Party's internal divisions and the difficulties faced by the nation's economy, allowed the Tories under Sir Robert Peel to make gains in the elections of 1835 and 1837, and to retake the House of Commons in 1841.

The Reform Act undoubtedly strengthened the House of Commons by reducing the number of nomination boroughs controlled by peers, but the Lords nonetheless remained powerful. Some aristocrats complained that, in the future, the government could compel them to pass a bill simply by threatening to swamp the upper House by creating new peerages. The Duke of Wellington lamented: "If such projects can be carried into execution by a minister of the Crown with impunity, there is no doubt that the constitution of this House, and of this country, is at an end. There is absolutely an end put to the power and objects of deliberation in this House, and an end to all just and proper means of decision." But the subsequent history of Parliament indicates that the influence of the Lords was largely undiminished. They compelled the Commons to accept significant amendments to the Municipal Reform Bill in 1835, forced compromises on Jewish emancipation, and resisted several other bills despite public opinion to the contrary.