The Growth of Parliamentary Democracy: Consequences of The Great Reform Act Flashcards
How many boroughs were disenfranchised?
56
How many boroughs lost on of their two MPs?
30
How many new boroughs were formed?
42
How many extra seats did Scotland and Ireland get?
8 & 5 respectively
In the counties votes were given to…
Adult males who owned land worth £10 a year or rented land worth £50 a year, as well as 40 shilling freeholder
In the boroughs….
Votes made uniform and given to men who owned/rented property over £10 and had been there more than a year, and hadn’t had poor relief. Not inherited.
All voters…
Had to register
New electorate was mainly made up of…..
Middle Class business owners
The number of seats favored…
The counties
Were 366,000 voters, increased to…
650,000 (18% of the adult male population)
The working class were…
Still disenfranchised
By extending the franchise to middle classes, the aristocracy…
Destroyed any possibility of an alliance with the working class. Links instead were strong with propertied interests.
Corruption after the 1832 was still widespread, for example…
Henry Hunt lost his seat in the first GE after GRA, to a Tory-Whig alliance of two wealthy families in Preston, and William Gladstone was elected MP in Newark thanks to the Duke of Newcastle’s intimidation of the constituency
As a result of a larger electorate, the parties…
Needed to encourage people to vote
The Tory Party set up…. to encourage votes
The Carlton Club
The Whig Party established…. to encourage voters
The Reform Club
In local government…
Party activists emerged to encourage voters
The 1835 Municipal Corporation Act…
Dissolved current local councils and introduced elected councils, which any male ratepayer could vote for
After 1832, political parties ideologies…
Became clearer, and the parties more polarised, establishing the rise of the two party system
The parties became more responsive to the electorate after 1832, and passed lots of social and economic acts, such as…
The Poor Law Act passed in 1834
Although Chartism was initially considered a failure, it did…
Keep radical ideas alive
