It would be difficult to overstate the magnitude of change in nineteenth century Britain. In a country which preened itself on the smoothness of its political adaptation and on its avoidance of the violent revolutions that rocked the Continent, political change was nonetheless massive, and no major institution of the polity escaped the century without fundamental alteration. In a country whose best economists at the beginning of the century believed that large increases in population, given a fixed supply of other factors of production (in particular, land), could only lead to famine, the population nonetheless quadrupled at the same time that the real product per capita also quadrupled (Deane and Cole 1967: 282). In this chapter we sketch the broad outline of political and economic events. The purpose is chiefly to provide some of the general historical background that readers who are not Victorian historians may require. The discussion in the second section also covers some topics – in particular, the expansion of the press and the alteration of the rules of procedure of both private and public legislation – that are important in later chapters.

THE COURSE OF POLITICS

The best-known landmarks of nineteenth century British political history remain the three Reform Acts, which, in the Whig interpretation, punctuated the march from an aristocratic and factional politics, prevalent in the early years of the century, to a democratic and party-based politics at the end of the century. The greatest watershed was perhaps the first Reform Act, passed in 1832.