Great Britain
1815-1851
Section 11.54,
11.56 & 57
McKay Ch 23
(772-775)
Great Britain
1815-1850
-London Police
Force formed
(1828)
-Catholic
Emancipation Act
(1829)
Corn Law
passed
1815
1820
-Peterloo
Massacre (1819)
-Six Acts Passed
-Cato Street
Conspiracy
1825
Great
Exhibition in
Crystal Palace
(1851)
Chartists issue
Six Points (1836)
Factory
Act of
1833
1830
1835
Great Reform Bill
(1832)
Mines
Act
(1842)
1840
1845
-Irish Potato
Famine
begins
-Corn Laws
repealed
(1846)
1850
Ten Hour
Act (1847
Corn Laws
•
–
–
–
–
•
•
Tories (Landed classes)
feared competition of grain
agricultural after
Napoleonic wars ended
Passed 1st in series of
“Corn Laws” (1815-1846)
•
tariff on imported (grain)
that maintained high
prices for domestic
produce
•
Stopped importation of
cheaper foreign grains
Helped Tory aristocrats
who owned land
Hurt everyone else
Wages could not keep up with
prices
Contributes to the spread of
radicalism
What is the Point of View of this
membership card?
Peterloo Massacre (1819)
• Corn laws raised tensions
– Riot broke out in London in Dec 1816
– In Feb, the Prince Regent was attacked in
carriage
• Coercion Acts of 1817
– Gov suspended habeas corpus
• Allowed arbitrary arrest and punishment
• Curtailed freedom of press and assembly
– Infiltrated radical groups with agents
provocateurs (spies who egged on radicals)
• Peterloo Massacre
– Peaceful protest of 80 thousand at St. Peter’s
Fields in Manchester, England
– Reformers demanded
• Repeal of Corn Laws
• Universal male suffrage
• Annual elections of HOC
– Government cavalry rushed the crowed
– 11 killed, 400 wounded, including 113 women
– Dubbed the Peterloo Massacre in comparison
to Waterloo
Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth on the
Petterloo Massacre (1819)
A conspiracy existed for the subversion of the constitution in church and
state, and of the rights of property... He should now describe the
measures designed to meet this evil... It was proposed, that any person
having been tried, convicted and punished for a blasphemous or
seditious libel, should on conviction of a second offence, be liable ... to
fine, imprisonment, banishment, or transportation ... [and] that all
publications, consisting of less than a given number of sheets, should
be subjected to a duty equal to that paid by newspapers.
To obviate the danger of tumultuous and seditious meetings... any
parties wishing to meet for consideration of subjects connected with
church or state, should notify their intention by a requisition signed by
seven householders, and it should be illegal for any person not usually
inhabiting the place where it was called, to attend. It was proposed to
give the magistrates the power, with some limitations, of appointing the
time and place of meeting.
…
The Annual Register, Vol.61 (1819) pp.128-9
Six Acts (1819)
• Parliament laws meant to
repress political agitators
• Highpoint of political repression
in post Napoleonic Great Britain
• Preamble said: every meeting
for radical reform is an overt act
of treasonable conspiracy
against the King and his
government
– Outlawed seditions and
blasphemous literature
– Stamp tax on newspapers
– Search of private houses for
arms
– Restricted the right of public
meetings
Political Cartoon commenting on
the suppression of the English Bill
of Rights under the Six Acts
Cato Street Conspiracy (1820)
• George III died in 1820
• Newspaper announced that
important minister of parliament
were to dine at home of Lord
Harrowby
• Revolutionary socialist
republicans saw this as chance
for coup d'état of the Tory
government
– Had been egged on by agent
provocateurs
• Caught by police on Cato Street
(1820)
• Five members of the Cato Street
Conspiracy were hanged &
beheaded
• Used to justify the passage of the
Six Acts
• Great Britain is on the verge of
becoming a reactionary state
The EXECUTION of THISTLEWOOD, INGS,
BRUNT, DAVIDSON, and TIDD for High TREASON
in Forming of a plot to assassinate his Majesty's
Ministers whilst at a cabinet Dinner. They were
Executed on Monday May 1st in Front of
Newgate and after hanging half an hour they
were cut down and their heads severed from
their Bodies and help up and proclaimed the
head of a traitor.
Catholic Emancipation Act
• Act of Union (1800)
– Made Ireland part of the United
Kingdom (Great Britain = England,
Wales, & Scotland)
– Now Irish Protestants (Anglicans)
could vote
• Penal Laws
– Irish Catholics still excluded from
running for office or voting
• Daniel O’Connell
– Irish nationalist was elected to
Parliament in 1828 (but legally could
not take a seat)
• Duke of Wellington (Conservative)
feared nationalists revolt
– Pushed through Catholic
Emancipation Act
• Catholics could now run for office
• Provision in it required substantial
property to vote
This is an anti-Catholic cartoon:
Peel and Wellington are the
"gravediggers" of the
Constitution, Daniel O'Connell
and the Pope are taking over St.
Paul's Cathedral (renamed St.
Patrick's) and the King is
heading out of the picture (right)
Tory Reform
•
•
Sir Robert Peel(1788-1850)
Conservative Prime Minister
(1834-36, 1841-1846)
–
“Orange Peel” for his
outspoken opposition to
Catholic Emancipation
•
Initiates Gaols Act of 1823
– Prison reform bill
•
Capital punishment eliminated for
about 100 offenses
•
Sponsored law for the creation of
the Metropolitan Police Force on
London streets (1829)
– Paid professionals who were
visible to help prevent crime
–
Known as “Bobbies” or
disparagingly as Peelers
–
Greatly helped to reduce crime
Great Reform Bill of 1832
• House of Commons
– did not represent the population or economy
• Rotten Boroughs
– Some boroughs were empty and had
representation
– one was under water in the North Sea
• New factory towns were un-represented (Manchester)
• Whigs propose reform bill on elections
• Tories under Wellington (victor of Waterloo was most
extreme conservative) refuse to reform
• Great Reform Bill of 1832
– Got rid of hundreds of “rotten boroughs”
– Large industrial cities like Manchester now had
representatives in Parliament
– Extended right to vote to men who owned a house
worth at least 10 pounds
• Bourgeoisie Middle Class liberals
• BUT
– United Kingdom still not democratic
• Tenant farmers, urban workers, Irish Catholic
peasants still can not vote
•
Whigs v Tories
After Reform Bill of 1832 two
defined political parties emerge
who compete for votes by
reforming
•
Whig Party
– Classic Liberal
– Party of Factory Owners, some
aristocrats
– Party of Big
Business/Enlightenment Ideals
•
Tory Party
– Conservative party (Tories)
– Party of Landowners,
traditionalists, the Old Order,
factory workers
Whigs v Tories
Liberals Reforms
•
1833 Slavery is abolished
•
1834 New Poor Law is
passed
–
Provided relief for sick and
aged (not able bodied)
•
Municipal corporations act
–
Helped cities manage
urban life problems
•
Corn Laws Repealed in
1846!!!
–
Industry became the
mainstay of the British
economy
–
Textile manufactures, coal,
shipping, and financial
services become the basis
of the new economy
–
Agricultural decreases
–
Britain depended on the
maintenance of free trade
and naval power
Tory Reforms
•
Tories become champions of the
industrial workers
–
Publicized the social evils of
rapid and ruthless
industrialization
–
Humanitarian industrialists were
sympathetic
•
Factory Act 1833 forbade child
labor (under 9)
–
Paid inspectors to insure
compliance
•
Mines Act of 1842
–
underground mine work was
forbidden for women, girls, and
boys under 10
•
Ten Hours Act of 1847
–
limited the labor of women and
children to 10 hours
–
eventually men only worked ten
hours
Ireland and the Great Famine
•
•
•
•
•
Irish historically resisted English attempts at
assimilation and modernization
–
Remained defiantly Catholic
Majority were Tenant farmers
–
Rented land from absentee English
Protestant landlords
–
lived in shocking poverty
–
Yet experienced tremendous population
growth
–
growth was due to potato cultivation, early
marriage, and high rents
•
Potato required little land, provided high
vitamin and caloric yield
From 1844-1846 potato crop decimated by fungus
Relief efforts were inadequate
–
landlords continued to demand rents or evict
tenant farmers
–
government continued to collect taxes and
export unaffected food
• Held to laissez faire economics
Millions died or left Ireland; anti-British feelings &
Irish nationalism grew
Click for video Clip
Big Idea
• Political Zeitgeist (1815-1851)
– Extreme conservativism throughout Europe
• Repression of all other isms
– Industrialism breeds radicalism
• Conditions in factories, child labor, mines, urban
poverty/ overcrowded conditions, high price of grain,
romantic lamentations of industrialization
– Great Britain may have experienced a revolution
(1848) but does not
– Why?
– Parliamentary system
• Party system allows for gradual reform
Crystal Palace
(1851)
• Reflects the
Industrial and
technological
dominance of Great
Britain in 1851