On the Reform Act of 1832

The Act to Amend the Representation of the People in England and map iconWales (or Great Reform Act) of 1832 reshaped the political landscape of Great Britain.[1] Yet it did so without producing a significant alteration in the elected government or a massive extension of the franchise.

By the terms of the constitutional monarchy formed in 1688, the English Parliament represented the interests of the nation by ritually gathering noblemen and bishops in the House of Lords and the (often aristocratic) elected representatives of boroughs and counties in the House of Commons in order to form a government together with the Crown. This system went unchanged even as the Parliament of England and Wales combined with those of Scotland (in 1707) and map iconIreland (in the 1800 Act of Union).

Sparked by riots and electoral rebellion, the Reform of 1832 sought to ensure better "representation of the people" in the House of Commons. The resulting act was designed by its Whig authors to fortify ongoing aristocratic power with the people's consent. By reforming the House of Commons in response to widespread protests, however, the ruling class in Parliament effectively sanctioned a changing political order. The Great Reform Act thus marks a crucial moment in the history of British political representation.

This entry examines the Great Reform Act of 1832 (or First Reform Act) as a key moment for the British national imagination. It explores this crisis in aristocratic rule through the prisms of class, religion, geography, and the rise of the popular press. Highlighting the concept of representation enshrined by the act and the age of Reform that it inaugurated, it compares the adoption of electoral reform to the evolving practice of parliamentary "privilege".

Parliamentary privilege, enshrined in the 1689 Bill of Rights, prevented an abuse of royal power by offering legal protection for statements made within the legislative chambers. As the eighteenth-century legal expert William Blackstone described it, "Privilege of parliament was principally established, in order to protect its members not only from being molested by their fellow-subjects, but also more especially from being oppressed by the power of the crown" (qtd. in Chafetz 5). Adopted with the restoration of monarchy after the heady days of the English civil war, it offered constitutional ballast for a balance of power. Yet it could also be used to keep fellow-subjects at bay–or in the dark. In 1727, for example, Edward Cave was imprisoned for writing newsletters containing an account of the proceedings of the House. The full House of Commons affirmed in February 1728 "that it is an indignity to, and a breach of the privilege of, this House, for any person to presume to give, in written or printed newspapers, any account or minute of the debates or other proceedings. That upon discovery of the authors, printers, or publishers of any such newspaper, this House will proceed against the offenders with the utmost severity" (qtd. in Gratton 9). As a standing order of 1738 confirmed, it was a breach of parliamentary privilege to print "any Account of the Debates, or other Proceedings of this House," and reporters were liable to exclusion at the request of a single Member of Parliament (M.P.) until 1875 (qtd. in Drew 10).

After mobs rioted to protest the imprisonment of newspaper proprietors in 1771, and again in 1810, Parliament came to tolerate unofficial reports, declining either to eject reporters on a regular basis or to prosecute the expansive reports of debates in all the major papers (Gratton 62, 73).[2] In the years between 1810 and 1830, moreover, innovations in newspaper printing, better roads, and faster coaches ensured faster and wider circulation of these reports. Unofficial digests and compilations of the debates also thrived: William Cobbett's Political Register spawned Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, and Charles Dickens began work as a parliamentary reporter for his uncle's encyclopedic venture, The Mirror of Parliament, just in time to witness the debates over parliamentary reform.[3] Although still officially prohibited until 1875, reporting on the debates became an accepted eavesdropping practice. By 1832, the reports of debates were an accepted breach in the age-old privileges of parliament, exposing to public view the leadership of its "lords spiritual and temporal".

The events surrounding parliamentary reform, likewise, might be seen as a "breach" in a dam–that is, in the fortification of parliament as a stable foundation of the constitutional monarchy. In 1832, this dam was re-formed, with an eye to enduring stability, by affording a different flow. This alteration permitted new kinds of circulation between the subjects of the state and their representatives. In this sense, the galvanizing events of reform constituted a breach of aristocratic privilege. Although the enacted reform was conceived as a permanent solution to the modern problems of parliamentary governance, the reformed government nonetheless found itself in an altered landscape, with the prospect of further breaches to come. Much like the practice of tolerating unofficial reports, in short, the Reform Act did not weaken aristocratic rule in the British parliament so much as it acknowledged and legitimized the ritual breach of ruling class privileges.