Reform Act 1832
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The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that introduced major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. It reapportioned constituencies to address the unequal distribution of seats and expanded franchise by broadening and standardising the property qualifications to vote. Only qualifying men were able to vote; the Act introduced the first explicit statutory bar to women voting by defining a voter as a male person.
A painting by Sir George Hayter that commemorates the passing of the Act. It depicts the first session of the newly reformed House of Commons on 5 February 1833 held in St Stephen's Chapel. In the foreground, the leading statesmen from the Lords: Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845), William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848), and the Whigs on the left; and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), and the Tories on the right. Currently in the
The House of Commons is the lower house of Parliament.
Canvassing for Votes, part of William Hogarth's Humours of an Election series, depicts the political corruption endemic in election campaigns prior to the Great Reform Act.
The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed his exclusion because of their belief that inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.
James Stuart, the Pretender during the Jacobite rising of 1715, by gaining some Tory support it was thus used to discredit them by the Whigs
William Pitt the Younger