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Date
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Event
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Topics
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Details |
1780 |
Until now, only landowners and tenants--freeholders with 40 shillings per annum or more--are allowed to vote, and voting takes place in open poll books. Major Cartwright founds the Society for Constitutional Information, one of the first of the "radical societies" that agitated for voting and parliamentary reform; he publishes Give Us Our Rights, insisting that poor men should be allowed to vote. Christopher Wyvill and the Yorkshire Association lead the fight against Parliament. A committee in the Commons passes Dunning's resolution: "That the power of the Crown . . . ought to be diminished" (Parliament's typical reaction to pressure for electoral reform--blame the
king). |
*Parliamentary Reform
*Radicalism |
Details |
June 2, 1780 - June 8, 1780 |
The Gordon Riots: Parliament passes a Roman Catholic relief measure; for days, London is at the mercy of a mob and destruction is widespread. This event "nips the association movement [for Parliamentary reform] in the bud." |
*Parliamentary Reform
*Radicalism |
Details |
1785 |
William Pitt the Younger introduces Bill for Parliamentary reform, which seems to bode well for the future of the reform movement. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
Mar 4, 1790 |
Henry Flood, M.P., proposes Parliamentary Reform; that is, he proposes reforming the system for electing members to the House of Commons. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
1792 |
Reform: violence in France; repression in Britain (restrictions on freedom of the press). Fox gets Libel Act through Parliament; the act requires a jury and not a judge to determine libel (this act saves reformers in 1794). |
*French Revolution
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
Jan 25, 1792 |
Shoemaker Thomas Hardy starts the London Corresponding Society; the group debates for five nights--"Have we who are Tradesman, Shopkeepers and mechanics any right to seek to obtain a parliamentary reform?" |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
May 26, 1797 |
Grey's motion for parliamentary reform is defeated 258 to 63. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
June 1, 1818 |
Motion for Parliamentary Reform (universal suffrage and annual parliaments) defeated. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
1819 |
Reform: Six Acts passed against radical political Unions prohibits assemblies similar to St. Peter's Fields and imposes press censorship. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
Aug 16, 1819 |
Peterloo Massacre at Manchester: Mounted troops charged on a meeting, killing and maiming many people; it was a large, orderly and peaceful group of 60,000 that met at St. Peter's Fields, Manchester, to demand Parliamentary Reform. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
1827 |
The dominant government party begins to break up, finally allowing for the possibility of parliamentary reform; Canning becomes Prime
Minister. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
June 7, 1832 |
Reform Bill, now known as the First Reform Act of 1832, receives royal assent: while the Bill had dramatic effects for grossly underrepresented places like Scotland (the number of Scottish people allowed to vote increased from only 4,000 to 65,000 out of 2.5 million people), and although the bill changed voting from an aristocratic privilege to a middle class right, by comtemporary Western standards not much was accomplished in over 50 years of sometimes bloody battle for universal suffrage: because of the Bill, the electorate approximately doubled to about 800,000 voters, but 800,000 people is nowhere near "all" of the people--the population in Great Britain (Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales) was 24 million in an 1831 census, and increasing 1 million a year. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
1834 |
Reform Movement: Lord Lyndhurst declares Poor Man's Guardian not a newspaper and thus legal. |
*Parliamentary Reform
*Radicalism
*Poor Law |
Details |
1835 |
Reform of local governments by the Municipal Corporations Act. |
*Parliamentary Reform |
Details |
1837 |
Municipal Corporations Declarations Act removes disabilities for Quakers and Moravians. |
*Parliamentary Reform |