Essays On Reform 1867

This Elibron Classics title is a reprint of the original edition published by Macmillan and Co. in London, 1867.

This work brings together key texts drawn from the history of suffrage advocacy and agitation. The whole issue of voting rights and representation is shown to be anchored firmly in the wider political culture of Britain and Ireland as well as the Empire as a whole. Volume 1 covers texts from 1766 to 1795.

The Second Reform Act, passed in 1867, created a million new voters, doubling the electorate and propelling the British state into the age of mass politics. It marked the end of a twenty year struggle for the working class vote, in which seven different governments had promised change. Yet the standard works on 1867 are more than forty years old and no study has ever been published of reform in prior decades. This study provides the first analysis of the subject from 1848 to 1867, ranging from the demise of Chartism to the passage of the Second Reform Act. Recapturing the vibrancy of the issue and its place at the heart of Victorian political culture, it focuses not only on the reform debate itself, but on a whole series of related controversies, including the growth of trade unionism, the impact of the 1848 revolutions and the discussion of French and American democracy.

An authoritative study of the bloodless revolution which transformed Britain's political system.