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Toryism to Tamworth: The Triumph of Reform, 1827-1835*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Richard W. Davis
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Extract

The Great Reform Act has received a great deal of much needed attention in the last decade. One mode of getting at its significance has, however, been largely ignored. The mode usually followed, particularly recently, has been to examine what the Whig framers of the Act thought they were about, and then, by means of electoral analysis, whether they achieved their object. The two questions are not necessarily the same, of course. For example, most historians of the period would now agree that Professor D. C. Moore, however valuable and stimulating his contribution to the debate, is wrong about Whig intentions. Some may suspect he is also at least in part wrong about the electoral system which grew out of the Act. That, however, has yet to be proven. Yet, even if we could know all about the reformed electoral system, we would still not know all about the impact of the Great Reform Act. For in history what is important is not only what actually happened, but what people of the time believe happened. It is to this sort of question that I want to turn my attention in this paper. Because one of the best ways to appreciate the great significance of the Reform Act is to examine the change it wrought in the attitudes of politicians, particularly of Tory politicians.

Undoubtedly, the two most important of the recent works on the Act are the books of Professors Brock and Cannon. Essentially, both represent a vindication of the main outlines of the old “Whig interpretation.” Thus, both Brock and Cannon see the Act as a response to mounting pressures out-of-doors, the culmination of a long historical process, and an important turning point in the emergence of a more liberal and broadly based political system. Nor does either doubt that the Act marked an important concession to the middle classes, or that it deserves its old designation of “Great.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Summer 1980 , pp. 132 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1980

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Footnotes

*

Versions of this paper were delivered to the British History Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and to a session of the Southern Conference on British Studies at its 1979 meeting in Atlanta. I should like to acknowledge the support of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities which have generously subsidized my research.

References

1 Moore, D.C., The Politics of Deference: A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth Century English Political System (Hassocks and New York, 1976)Google Scholar.

2 Brock, Michael, the Great Reform Act (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Cannon, John, Parliamentary Reform (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar.

3 Ibid, p. 262.

4 Brock, pp. 317, 319, 320.

5 Cannon, p. 262.

6 Davis, Richard W., “The Whigs and the Idea of Electoral Deference: Some Further Thoughts on the Qreat Reform Act,” Durham University Journal, n.s. vol. 36, no. 1(December 1974): 79–91Google Scholar; “Deference and Aristocracy in the Time of the Great Reform Act,” American Historical Review, 81, no. 3 (June, 1976): S32–9Google Scholar.

7 Gash, Norman, Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832-1832 (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar.

8 See above, n. 4.

9 British Library (hereafter cited as BL), Add. MSS. 43060 ff. 113-20, 23 August 1834.

10 Gash, Norman, Mr. Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830 (London, 1961)Google Scholar, Sir Robert Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830 (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

11 Parker, C. S., Sir Robert Peel, 3 vols. (London, 1899), 2: 209Google Scholar.

12 Public Record Office (hereafter cited as PRO) 30/22/1A/219-20, n.d.

13 BL Add. MSS. 40302 ff. 184-7, 12 January 1835.

14 Oash, Norman, The Age of Peel (New York, 1968), p. 76Google Scholar.

15 Royal Archives, Windsor (hereafter cited as RA), Melbourne Papers (hereafter cited as MP) 5/128, Grey to Melbourne, 1 February 1835. Use of the material in the Royal Archives is by gracious permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

16 Aspinall, Arthur, ed., The Letters of King George IV, 1812-30, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1938), 3: 201–2Google Scholar, Lowther to Knighton, 27 February 1827.

17 Quoted in Oash, , Mr. Secretary Peel, p. 437Google Scholar.

18 BL Add. MSS. 40314 ff. 304-9, 9 April 1827.

19 Quoted in Broadlands Papers, Palmerston's journal, 22 April 1828. I am grateful for the permission of the trustees of the Broadlands Archive to make use of the papers at the National Register of Archives.

20 BL Add. MSS. 40307 ff. 257-9, 12 September 1828.

21 Bucks Record Office 0.137, Ooderich Papers, copy Wellington to Canning, 11 April 1827.

22 of Wellington, Second Duke, ed., Despatches, Correspondence and Memoranda of the Duke of Wellington, 8 vols. (1868–1880), 4:299–30 ff.Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Wellington, Corres.). The first letter is dated 20 January 1828.

23 Wellington Papers, Wellington to Burghersh, 29 February 1828.

24 Wellington, , Corres., 4: 411Google Scholar; BL Add. MSS. 40396 ff. 21-4, Peel to Lord Kenyon, 4 March 1828.

25 BL Add. MSS. 51870, Holland's journal, 27 July 1833. Kriegel's, Abraham D. excellent edition of The Holland House Diaries (London, 1977)Google Scholar came out after I consulted the papers.

26 BL Add. MSS. 40309 ff. 29-30, 6 April 1830.

27 Gash, Mr. Secretary Peel, p. 632.

28 Longford, Elizabeth, Wellington: Pillar of State (London, 1972), p. 176Google Scholar.

29 Henry, Earl Grey, ed., The Correspondence of the late Earl Grey with H.M. King William IV, 2 vols. (London, 1867), 2: 32–3Google Scholar.

30 Gash, , Mr. Secretary Peel, p. 672Google Scholar.

31 BL Add. MSS. 40402 ff. 81-3, 29 May 1831.

32 Ibid., ff. 17-18, Peel to Lord Chandos, 14 March 1831; Surrey Record Office, Ooulburn Papers, Peel to Ooulburn, 5 June 1831.

33 BL Add. MSS. 40402 ff. 110-11, Peel to Hobhouse, 28 September 1831.

34 Parker, 2: 189-30, 13 October 1831.

35 BL Add. MSS. 40402 ff. 233-8, 5 February 1832.

36 Gash, Sir Robert Peel, chap. 2.

37 Ibid., p. 42.

38 Gash, , Reaction, p. 70Google Scholar.

39 Goulburn Papers, 16 August 1833.

40 PRO 30/12/28/5, Ellenborough's Journal, 1834-5, 24 December 1834.

41 Gash, , Reaction, p. 142Google Scholar.

42 BL Add. MSS. 40309 ff. 344-6, 30 November 1834.

43 Ibid., 4033 ff. 177-8.

44 Ibid., ff. 179-80, Baring to Goulburn, 2 December 1834.

45 Ibid., 40316 ff. 110-12, 15 December 1834.