1830: had repercussions across the Channel
leaders in England: violence might be useful

 Tory regime:

1820s - a group of young men came forward (George Canning - foreign minister, Robert Peel); sensitive to the needs of British business + liberalism
 - they reduced tariffs
 - liberalized the old Navigation Acts (British colonies could trade with countries other than Britain)
 - made it lawful for skilled workers to emigrate from England
 - lawful for manufacturers to export machinery to foreign countries (English industrial secrets)

==>> they advanced the liberal ideas of a freely exchanging international system; they moved toward freedom of trade

Other measures:

- conception of a secular state (undermined the position of the Church of England)
- repealed the laws forbidding dissenting Protestants to hold public office
- Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland received the same rights as others
- capital punishment - abolished for about 100 offenses
- professional police force was introduced (replaced the local constables)

Tories could not do:

- question the Corn Laws
- reform the House of Commons

Corn Laws: set the tariff on imported grain, the gentlemen protected their rent rolls.
House of Commons - by the existing structure they governed;  the working class and the business interests looked to them as natural leaders

The House of Common - unrepresentative

- no new borough created since the Revolution (1688)
- population was shifting to the north (Industrial Revolution)
- new factory towns were underrepresented
- some boroughs - decayed over time - uninhabited
- many boroughs - dominated by influential persons (borough mongers)
- rural districts - two members of the Parliament for each county in an assembly influenced by the gentlefolk.

1820: less than 500 men ( most members of the House of Lords) selected a majority of the House of Commons.

prior to 1830 : more than 20 bills to reform the House of Commons failed to pass

1830: the issue raised by the Whigs ( the minority party)

the Tory prime minister: Duke of Wellington (extreme conservative), lost the confidence
Whigs ==>> took over the government ==>> introduced a reform bill; the House of Commons rejected it ==>> the Whig ministry resigned
> Tories refused to form a cabinet ( fear of popular violence)
> Whigs took over >>> introduced their reform bill >>> passed the Commons but failed the House of Lords

==>> popular revolt (London: Nottingham castle burned, jail at Derby attacked)

>>> the king intervened and in April 1832 the bill became law.

The Reform Bill (1832):

- English measure: adapted the English system (did not follow the new ideas brought by the French Revolution)

* On the Continent: each representative should represent the same number of voters; voters would qualify to vote - amount of property taxes.

* England: House of Commons represented boroughs and counties - without regard to size of population ( no equal electoral districts)
            - the right to vote depended on whether one lived in a borough or in a county; defined also in terms of rents (high concentration of land ownership - many important people did not own land)

===>>> the number of voters rose from 500,000 to 813,000

The Reform Bill:

>> reallocated the seats in the House of Commons (redistributed by region and by class)
     - 56 old and small boroughs were abolished
     - 30 small boroughs - right to send only one representative to Parliament (not 2)
     - 143 seats made available - given to the new industrial towns

===>>> No violent revolution in England.

England had the historic institution of Parliament - which provided the means by which social changes could be legally accomplished and continued.