Hegel's last published work was a long essay on the English Reform Bill, which originally appeared in the Preussische Staatszeitung in 1831. Hegel died a short while later, and the last installment of the essay was suppressed when the Prussian censorship forbade its publication.

Since in this essay Hegel casts doubts on the Reform Bill, it has become customary to view it as one of Hegel's most conservative, if not outright reactionary, pieces of writing. True, its argument runs contrary to what has come to be considered conventional wisdom regarding the course of parliamentary reform in nineteenth century England. The essay, however, is far from being a defence of the status quo and the unreformed House of Commons; if read carefully in its entirety, it appears as a most thoughtful piece of social criticism, revealing an attempt to transcend the mere political platitudes of the supporters of parliamentary reform and to identify the fundamental malaise of nineteenth-century English society, a malaise sometimes too conveniently overlooked by the sponsors and supporters of parliamentary reform.

The crux of Hegel's argument is that a mere reform of the franchise cannot by itself cure the social problems of English society. Hegel's essay is one of the most scathing indictments of English social conditions to come from a continental writer. Yet his critique is aimed not only at existing conditions in early industrial Britain, but also at the liberal attempts to overcome them through a purely electoral reform of parliament.