Whigs (British political party)
The Whigs were a political faction and a political party in the parliaments of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and 1850s, they contested power with the Tories; the Whigs' origin lay in constitutional opposition to absolute monarchy. The Whigs played a central role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and were the standing enemies of the Stuart kings and pretenders, who were Roman Catholic; the Whigs took full control of the government in 1715 and remained dominant until King George III, coming to the throne in 1760, allowed Tories back in. The Whig Supremacy was enabled by the Hanoverian succession of George I in 1714 and the failed Jacobite rising of 1715 by Tory rebels; the Whigs purged the Tories from all major positions in government, the army, the Church of England, the legal profession and local offices. The Party's hold on power was so strong and durable, historians call the period from 1714 to 1783 the age of the Whig Oligarchy; the first great leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government through the period 1721–1742 and whose protégé Henry Pelham led from 1743 to 1754.
Both parties began as loose groupings or tendencies, but became quite formal by 1784 with the ascension of Charles James Fox as the leader of a reconstituted Whig Party, arrayed against the governing party of the new Tories under William Pitt the Younger. Both parties were founded on rich politicians more than on popular votes, there were elections to the House of Commons, but a small number of men controlled most of the voters; the Whig Party evolved during the 18th century. The Whig tendency supported the great aristocratic families, the Protestant Hanoverian succession and toleration for nonconformist Protestants, while some Tories supported the exiled Stuart royal family's claim to the throne and all Tories supported the established Church of England and the gentry. On, the Whigs drew support from the emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants, while the Tories drew support from the landed interests and the royal family. However, by the first half of the 19th century the Whig political programme came to encompass not only the supremacy of parliament over the monarch and support for free trade, but Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery and expansion of the franchise.
The 19th century Whig support for Catholic emancipation was a complete reversal of the party's historic anti-Catholic position at its late 17th century origin. The term "Whig" was short for "whiggamor", a term meaning "cattle driver" used to describe western Scots who came to Leith for corn. In the reign of Charles I the term was used during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms to refer derisively to a radical faction of the Scottish Covenanters who called themselves the "Kirk Party", it was applied to Scottish Presbyterian rebels who were against the King's Episcopalian order in Scotland. The term "Whig" entered English political discourse during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–1681 when there was controversy about whether or not King Charles II's brother, should be allowed to succeed to the throne on Charles's death. "Whig" was a term of abuse applied to those who wanted to exclude James on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. The fervent Tory Samuel Johnson joked that "the first Whig was the Devil".
Under Lord Shaftesbury's leadership, the Whigs in the Parliament of England wished to exclude the Duke of York from the throne due to his Roman Catholicism, his favouring of monarchical absolutism, his connections to France. They believed the heir presumptive, if allowed to inherit the throne, would endanger the Protestant religion and property; the first Exclusion Bill was supported by a substantial majority on its second reading in May 1679. In response, King Charles prorogued Parliament and dissolved it, but the subsequent elections in August and September saw the Whigs' strength increase; this new parliament did not meet for thirteen months, because Charles wanted to give passions a chance to die down. When it met in October 1680, an Exclusion Bill was introduced and passed in the Commons without major resistance, but was rejected in the Lords. Charles dissolved Parliament in January 1681, but the Whigs did not suffer serious losses in the ensuing election; the next Parliament first met in March at Oxford, but Charles dissolved it after only a few days, when he made an appeal to the country against the Whigs and determined to rule without Parliament.
In February, Charles had made a deal with the French King Louis XIV, who promised to support him against the Whigs. Without Parliament, the Whigs crumbled due to government repression following the discovery of the Rye House Plot; the Whig peers, the Earl of Melville, the Earl of Leven, Lord Shaftesbury, Charles II's illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth, being implicated, fled to and regrouped in the United Provinces. Algernon Sidney, Sir Thomas Armstrong and William Russell, Lord Russell, were executed for treason; the Earl of Essex committed suicide in the Tower of London over his arrest for treason, whilst Lord Grey of Werke escaped from the Tower. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Queen Mary II and King William III governed with both Whigs and Tories, despite the fact that many of the Tories still supported the deposed Roman Catholic James II. William saw that the Tories were friendlier to royal authority than the Whigs and he employed both groups in his government, his early ministry was Tory, but the government came to be dominated by the so-called Junto Whig
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. The governing party since 2010, it is the largest in the House of Commons, with 313 Members of Parliament, has 249 members of the House of Lords, 18 members of the European Parliament, 31 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 12 members of the Welsh Assembly, eight members of the London Assembly and 8,916 local councillors; the Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party—the Conservatives' colloquial name is "Tories"—and was one of two dominant political parties in the nineteenth century, along with the Liberal Party. Under Benjamin Disraeli it played a preeminent role in politics at the height of the British Empire. In 1912, the Liberal Unionist Party merged with the party to form the Conservative and Unionist Party. In the 1920s, the Labour Party surpassed the Liberals as the Conservatives' main rivals. Conservative Prime Ministers — notably Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher — led governments for 57 years of the twentieth century.
Positioned on the centre-right of British politics, the Conservative Party is ideologically conservative. Different factions have dominated the party at different times, including One Nation Conservatives and liberal conservatives, while its views and policies have changed throughout its history; the party has adopted liberal economic policies—favouring free market economics, limiting state regulation, pursuing privatisation—although in the past has supported protectionism. The party is British unionist, opposing both Irish reunification and Welsh and Scottish independence, supported the maintenance of the British Empire; the party includes those with differing views on the European Union, with Eurosceptic and pro-European wings. In foreign policy, it is for a strong national defence; the Conservatives are a member of the International Democrat Union and the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe and sit with the European Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary group. The Scottish, Northern Irish and Gibraltan branches of the party are semi-autonomous.
Its support base consists of middle-class voters in rural areas of England, its domination of British politics throughout the twentieth century has led to it being referred to as one of the most successful political parties in the Western world. The Conservative Party was founded in the 1830s. However, some writers trace its origins to the reign of Charles II in the 1670s Exclusion Crisis. Other historians point to a faction, rooted in the 18th century Whig Party, that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s, they were known as "Independent Whigs", "Friends of Mr Pitt", or "Pittites" and never used terms such as "Tory" or "Conservative". Pitt died in 1806. From about 1812 on the name "Tory" was used for a new party that, according to historian Robert Blake, "are the ancestors of Conservatism". Blake adds that Pitt's successors after 1812 "were not in any sense standard-bearer's of true Toryism"; the term "Conservative" was suggested as a title for the party by a magazine article by J. Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review in 1830.
The name caught on and was adopted under the aegis of Sir Robert Peel around 1834. Peel is acknowledged as the founder of the Conservative Party, which he created with the announcement of the Tamworth Manifesto; the term "Conservative Party" rather than Tory was the dominant usage by 1845. The widening of the electoral franchise in the nineteenth century forced the Conservative Party to popularise its approach under Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, who carried through their own expansion of the franchise with the Reform Act of 1867. In 1886, the party formed an alliance with Spencer Compton Cavendish, Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain's new Liberal Unionist Party and, under the statesmen Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour, held power for all but three of the following twenty years before suffering a heavy defeat in 1906 when it split over the issue of free trade. Young Winston Churchill denounced Chamberlain's attack on free trade, helped organize the opposition inside the Unionist/Conservative Party.
Balfour, as party leader, followed Chamberlain's policy introduced protectionist legislation. The high tariff element called itself "Tariff Reformers" and in a major speech in Manchester on May 13, 1904, Churchill warned their takeover of the Unionist/Conservative party would permanently brand it as: A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation. Two weeks Churchill crossed the floor and formally joined the Liberal Party. )He rejoined the Conservatives in 1925.) In December, Balfour lost control of his party, as the defections multiplied. He was replaced by Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman who called an election in January 1906, which produced a massive Liberal victory with a gain of 214 seats. Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith enacted a great deal of reform legislation, but the Unionists worked hard at grassroots organizing. Two general elections were held in one in January and one in December; the two main parties were now dead equal in seats.
The Unionists had more popular votes but the Liberals kept control with a coalition with the Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1912, the Liberal Unionis
William Smith O'Brien
William Smith O'Brien was an Irish nationalist Member of Parliament and leader of the Young Ireland movement. He encouraged the use of the Irish language, he was convicted of sedition for his part in the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848, but his sentence of death was commuted to deportation to Van Diemen's Land. In 1854, he was released on the condition of exile from Ireland, he lived in Brussels for two years. In 1856 O'Brien was pardoned and returned to Ireland. Born in Dromoland, Newmarket on Fergus, County Clare, he was the second son of Sir Edward O'Brien, 4th Baronet, of Dromoland Castle, his mother was Charlotte Smith. William took his mother's maiden name, upon inheriting the property, he lived at a mile from Ardagh, County Limerick. He was a descendant of Brian Boru, he received an upper-class English education at Trinity College, Cambridge. Subsequently, he studied law at Lincoln's Inn in London. From April 1828 to 1831 he was Conservative MP for Ennis, he became MP for Limerick County in 1835, holding his seat in the House of Commons until 1849.
Being found guilty of High Treason he forfeited his seat in the House of Commons. Although a Protestant country-gentleman, he supported Catholic Emancipation while remaining a supporter of British-Irish union. In 1843, in protest against the imprisonment of Daniel O'Connell, he joined O'Connell's anti-union Repeal Association. Three years O'Brien withdrew the Young Irelanders from the association. With Thomas Francis Meagher, in January 1847 he founded the Irish Confederation, although he continued to preach reconciliation until O'Connell's death in May 1847, he was active in seeking relief from the hardships of the famine. In March 1848, he tried to incite a national rebellion, he was not convicted. On 29 July 1848, O'Brien and other Young Irelanders led landlords and tenants in a rising in three counties, with an bloodless battle against police at Ballingarry, County Tipperary. In O'Brien's subsequent trial, the jury found him guilty of high treason, he was sentenced to be hanged and quartered.
Petitions for clemency were signed by 10,000 people in England. In Dublin on 5 June 1849, the sentences of O'Brien and other members of the Irish Confederation were commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen's Land. O'Brien attempted to escape from Maria Island off Tasmania, but was betrayed by Ellis, captain of the schooner hired for the escape, he was sent to Port Arthur where he met up with John Mitchel, transported before the rebellion. The cottages which O'Brien lived in on Maria Island and Port Arthur have been preserved in their 19th century state as memorials. Having emigrated to the United States, Ellis was tried by another Young Irelanders leader, Terence MacManus, at a lynch court in San Francisco for the betrayal of O'Brien, he was freed for lack of evidence. In 1854, after five years in Tasmania, O'Brien was released on the condition he never return to the United Kingdom, he settled in Brussels. In May 1856, he was returned to Ireland that July, he contributed to the Nation newspaper, published the two-volume Principles of Government, or Meditations in Exile in 1856, but played no further part in politics.
In 1864 he visited England and Wales, with the view of rallying his failing health, but no improvement took place, he died at Bangor, in Wales on 16 June 1864. O'Brien was a founding member of the Ossianic Society, whose aim was further the interests of the Irish language and to publish and translate literature relating to the Fianna, he wrote to his son Edward from Van Diemen's Land. He himself studied the language and used an Irish-language Bible, presented to the Royal Irish Academy Irish-language manuscripts he had collected, he enjoyed the respect of Clare poets, in 1863, on his advice, Irish was introduced into a number of schools there. A statue of William Smith O'Brien stands in Dublin. Sculpted in Portland limestone, it was designed by Thomas Farrell and erected in D'Olier Street, Dublin, in 1870, it was moved to its present position in 1929. In the United States, O'Brien County, Iowa is named after him. While studying in London O'Brien met Mary Ann Wilton and fathered two children born to her.
In Autumn 1832 he married Lucy Caroline Gabbett of County Limerick. They had two girls; the children of William Smith O'Brien and Lucy O'Brien were Edward William, William Joseph, Lucy Josephine, Lucius Henry, Robert Donough, Charlotte Grace and Charles Murrough. The elder daughter Lucy Josephine O'Brien married Rev John Gwynn and their children included writer and MP Stephen Gwynn, Lucy Gwynn, the first woman registrar of Trinity College and Edward Gwynn, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. O'Brien's younger daughter Charlotte Grace O'Brien was a campaigner for the better treatment of Irish emigrants. William Smith O'Brien's elder brother Lucius O'Brien was for some time member of parliament for County Clare. William Smith O'Brien's sister Harriet O'Brien was soon widowed; as Harriet Monsell, she founded the order of Anglican nuns, the Community of St John Baptist
Feargus O'Connor
Feargus Edward O'Connor was an Irish Chartist leader and advocate of the Land Plan, which sought to provide smallholdings for the labouring classes. A charismatic figure, O'Connor was admired for his energy and oratory, but was criticised for alleged egotism. After the failure of his Land Plan, O'Connor's behaviour became erratic, culminating in an assault on three MPs and a mental breakdown, from which he did not recover. After his death three years at the age of 59, 40,000 people witnessed the funeral procession. Feargus O'Connor was born on 18 July 1796 in Connorville house, near Castletown-Kinneigh in west County Cork, into a prominent Irish Protestant family who claimed to be the descendants of the 12th-century king Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, he was christened Edward Bowen O'Connor, but his father chose to call him Feargus. His father was Irish nationalist politician Roger O'Connor, who like his uncle Arthur O'Connor was active in the United Irishmen, his elder brother Francis became a general in Simón Bolívar's army of liberation in South America.
Much of his early life was spent on his family's estates in Ireland, which included Dangan Castle, the childhood home of the Duke of Wellington. He was educated at Portarlington Grammar School and had some elementary schooling in England. O'Connor's father Roger was notorious for his eccentric lifestyle. At one point Feargus and Francis decided to leave, stealing horses from their brother Roderic, travelling to London and asking to be taken in by family friend M. P. Francis Burdett. Burdett looked after them, financed Feargus to run a farm in Ireland, but it was unsuccessful, he studied law at Trinity College, before inheriting his uncle's estate in 1820. He took no degree, but was called to the Irish bar about 1820. Since he had to take an oath of allegiance to the crown to become a member of the Bar, his father disinherited him because he regarded it as inconsistent with the dignity of a descendent of the Kings of Ireland. O'Connor's first known public speech was made in 1822 at Enniskene, County Cork, denouncing landlords and the Protestant clergy.
During that year he composed a pamphlet State of Ireland. Around this time he was wounded in a fight with soldiers as a member of the Whiteboys covert agrarian organisation. Going to London to escape arrest, he tried to make a living by writing, he produced five manuscripts at this time, but none were published. In 1831 O'Connor agitated for the Reform Bill in County Cork, after its passage in 1832, he travelled about the county organising registration of the new electorate. During the 1830s he emerged as an advocate for Irish rights and democratic political reform, a critic of the British Whig government's policies on Ireland. In 1832, he was elected to the British House of Commons as Member of Parliament for County Cork, as a Repeal candidate rather than a Whig. Feargus O'Connor came into Parliament as a follower of Daniel O'Connell, his speeches during this time were devoted to the Irish question, he was sarcastically described by Fraser's Magazine as active, violent, a ready speaker, the model of an Irish patriot, but as one who did nothing, suggested nothing, found fault with everything.
He voted with the radicals: for tax on property. He quarreled with O'Connell, repudiating him for his practice of yielding to the Whigs, came out in favour of a more aggressive Repeal policy. In the general election of 1835 O'Connor was re-elected, but disqualified from being seated because he lacked sufficient property to qualify. However, it appears. O'Connor next planned to raise a volunteer brigade for Isabella II of Spain in the First Carlist War, but when William Cobbett died in April 1835, he decided to run for Cobbett's seat at Oldham. Oldham was a two-member constituency and Cobbett's colleague John Fielden advocated the Cobbett's son John Morgan Cobbett should be the Radical candidate to replace his father. O'Connor presented himself as an alternative Radical candidate, but withdrew, alleging Fielden had not been straightforward with him: whether because of the controversy over the selection of the candidate or the refusal of J M Cobbett to support disestablishment, Cobbett lost narrowly to a local ‘Liberal Conservative’.
In the 1837 general election he was nominated at Preston, but with no intention of taking votes from John Crawfurd, the only other anti-Tory candidate. Having been nominated and made his hustings speech, he withdrew once he and Crawfurd had won the show of hands traditionally called for before any polling took place From 1833 O'Connor had spoken to working men's organisations and agitated in factory areas for the "Five Cardinal Points of Radicalism," which were five of the six points embodied in the People's Charter. In 1837 he founded at Leeds, Yorkshire, a radical newspaper, the Northern Star, worked with others for a radical Chartism through the London Democratic Association. O'Connor was the Leeds representative of the London Working Men's Association, he travelled Britain speaking at meetings, was one of the most popular Chartist orators. He was at various points arrested and imprisoned for his views, receiving an 18-month sentence in 1840, he became involved in internal struggles within the movement.
When the first wave of Chartism ebbed, O'Connor founded the Chartist Cooperative Land Company in 1845. It aimed to buy agricultural estates and subdivide the land into smallholdings which could be let to individuals; the impossibility of all subscribers ac
Chartism
Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in Britain that existed from 1838 to 1857. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, the South Wales Valleys. Support for the movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842, 1848, when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to the House of Commons; the strategy employed was to use the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings demonstrated to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, though there were some who became involved in insurrectionary activities, notably in south Wales and in Yorkshire; the People's Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic: A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, not undergoing punishment for a crime.
The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote. No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice. Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation. Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones. Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period. Chartists saw themselves fighting against political corruption and for democracy in an industrial society, but attracted support beyond the radical political groups for economic reasons, such as opposing wage cuts and unemployment. After the passing of the Reform Act 1832, which failed to extend the vote beyond those owning property, the political leaders of the working class made speeches claiming that there had been a great act of betrayal.
This sense that the working class had been betrayed by the middle class was strengthened by the actions of the Whig governments of the 1830s. Notably, the hated new Poor Law Amendment was passed in 1834, depriving working people of outdoor relief and driving the poor into workhouses, where families were separated, it was the massive wave of opposition to this measure in the north of England in the late 1830s that gave Chartism the numbers that made it a mass movement. It seemed that only securing the vote for working men would change things, indeed Dorothy Thompson, the pre-eminent historian of Chartism, defined the movement as the time when "thousands of working people considered that their problems could be solved by the political organization of the country." In 1836 the London Working Men's Association was founded by William Lovett and Henry Hetherington, providing a platform for Chartists in the south east. The origins of Chartism in Wales can be traced to the foundation in the autumn of 1836 of Carmarthen Working Men's Association.
Both nationally and locally a Chartist press thrived in the form of periodicals, which were important to the movement for their news, editorials and reports on international developments. They reached a huge audience; the Poor Man's Guardian in the 1830s, edited by Henry Hetherington, dealt with questions of class solidarity, manhood suffrage and temperance. The paper explored the rhetoric of violence versus non-violence, or what its writers referred to as moral versus physical force, it was succeeded as the voice of radicalism by an more famous paper: the Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser. The Star was published between 1837 and 1852, in 1839 was the best-selling provincial newspaper in Britain, with a circulation of 50,000 copies. Like other Chartist papers it was read aloud in coffee houses and the open air. Other Chartist periodicals included the Northern Liberator, English Chartist Circular, the Midland Counties' Illuminator; the papers gave justifications for the demands of the People's Charter, accounts of local meetings, commentaries on education and temperance and a great deal of poetry.
The papers advertised upcoming meetings organised by local grass roots branches, held either in public houses, or in their own halls. Research of the distribution of Chartist meetings in London which were advertised in the Norther Star shows that the movement was not uniformly spread across the Metropolis, but was instead clustered in the city's West End where a group of Chartist tailors had shops, as well as in Shoreditch in the east, relied on pubs that supported local friendly societies. Readers found denunciations of imperialism—the First Opium War was condemned—and of the arguments of free traders about the civilizing and pacifying influences of free trade. In 1837, six Members of Parliament and six working men, including William Lovett formed a committee, which in 1838 published the People's Charter; this set out the six main aims of the movement. The achievement of these aims would give working men a say in law-making: they would be able to vote, their vote would be protected by a secret ballot.
None of these demands was new, but the People's Charter was to become one of the most famous political
Peelite
The Peelites were a breakaway dissident political faction of the British Conservative Party from 1846 to 1859 who joined with the Whigs and Radicals to form the Liberal Party. They were led by Robert Peel, Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader in 1846; the Peelites were characterised by commitment to free trade and a managerial technocratic, approach to government. Though they sought to maintain the principles of the Conservative Party, Peelites disagreed with the major wing of that party on issues of trade, in particular the issue of whether agricultural prices should be artificially kept high by tariffs; the Peelites were called the Liberal Conservatives in contrast to Protectionist Conservatives led by Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby. Facing a serious famine in Ireland in 1845, the Peelites sought to lower food prices by repealing the Corn Laws, he was able to carry the repeal vote in the House of Commons, but only at the price of splitting the Conservative Party, a split which led to the fall of Peel's government in June 1846 and its replacement by a Whig government led by John Russell, 1st Earl Russell.
The leading members of the Peelite faction that developed after the 1846 split of the Conservative Party were the following: The Peelites numbered about a third of the old Conservative party following the 1847 general election. Their main political positions at that time were closer to the Protectionist Conservatives than to the Whigs and Radicals in parliament, except on the issue of free trade; the split had been so bitter on a personal level, with attacks on Peel by Protectionist Conservatives such as Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, that the Conservative Party was unable to reconcile the Peelites after the Conservatives abandoned protection in 1852. The Peelites had their own newspaper The Morning Chronicle to highlight their political position. After Peel's death in 1850, the Peelite faction was led by Sir James Lord Aberdeen. In the 1852 general election, the number of Peelites was estimated at around 40. In that same year, George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen was invited by Queen Victoria to form a coalition government with the Whigs and the Radicals.
This government fell in 1855 as a result of the unpopularity of its hesitant attitude during the Crimean War. After the fall of the Aberdeen government, the Peelite faction took most of the blame for their management of the war in the Crimea; the party further lost cohesion with some members including William Ewart Gladstone, Sir James Graham, 2nd Baronet and Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea accepting cabinet posts in the new government led by Viscount Palmerston only to resign a few weeks when the government agreed to hold a commission on the conduct of the recent war. Others stayed, including George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll and Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe after which the Peelites with now no agreed overall leader appeared to be a band of independents rather than a political faction. In the 1857 general election, their numbers further decreased to around 26, or maybe less than 20 as identifying, and, not a Peelite became difficult); the Peelites disappeared as a distinctive political faction when they agreed to combine with the Whigs, the Radicals and the Independent Irish Party Members of the United Kingdom Parliament to bring down the Conservative government of Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby in 1859.
The subsequent creation of Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston's ministry out of this combination was the birth of the British Liberal Party. Several leading Peelites accepted cabinet posts in this ministry, though some Peelites became independents or returned to the Conservatives. Jones, Wilbur Devereux. Erickson; the Peelites 1846-1857. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University
Repeal Association
The Repeal Association was an Irish mass membership political movement set up by Daniel O'Connell in 1830 to campaign for a repeal of the Acts of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland. The Association's aim was to revert Ireland to the constitutional position achieved by Henry Grattan and his patriots in the 1780s—that is, legislative independence under the British Crown—but this time with a full Catholic involvement, now possible following the Act of Emancipation in 1829, supported by the electorate approved under the Reform Act of 1832. On its failure by the late 1840s the Young Ireland movement developed. Repealer candidates contested 1832 in Ireland. Between 1835 and 1841, they formed a pact with the Whigs. Repealer candidates, unaffiliated with the Whig Party, contested the 1841 and 1847 general elections; the seats figure in brackets is the position after election petitions and by-elections consequent upon election petitions, had been decided. There were 103 Irish MPs in the period.
Votes in 1835 and 1837 are included in Thrasher's tables. Sources: Walker and Rallings & Thrasher. History of Ireland Catholic Association Young Ireland Loyal National Repeal Association British Electoral Facts 1832 - 1999, compiled and edited by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher Parliamentary Election Results in Ireland, 1801-1922, edited by B. M. Walker
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