The influence of the American and French Revolutions

• Many Reformers took inspiration from France and the USA.
• The American Revolution:

  • colonists raised the issue that if people paid taxes imposed by parliament they should also have representatives in Parliament
  • This idea showed weakness in the British Parliamentary system -> urban, large towns didn’t really have MP’s when compared with small rural southern areas. Also, much of the country couldn’t vote
  • “No taxation without representation”
  • Achieved liberty and set up their own constitution
  • This influenced Tom Paine
• The French Revolution:

  • after the French revolution, taxpayers in France were given the vote
  • wide scale vote for representatives to a States General in 1789 -> people had a greater say
  • ideas about liberty, fraternity and equality -> seen as a myth by some Historians, but inspired radicals in Britain at the time
  • 1792 -> France was a republic
  • active citisens had the vote (those who paid taxes)
  • inspired the Society of the Friends of the People by Grey (80 Societies) and London Corresponding Society by Hardy
  • Terror of 1792 discredited this
• Britain and reform:

  • People wanted reform and Pitt even tried to pass a law for this in April 1785 -> but no societies focused on just reforming parliament except BPU in 1830
  • these proposed measures were limited as Pitt didn't believe in change being needed -> 72 seats were to be redistributed but this didn't happen
  • it also didn't involve the urban areas that much
  • bill was defeated by 248 to 174
• society of the friends of the people by Grey (1792):

  • encourage lower and middle-class demands for parliamentary reform. These activities—which at the time were considered radical—followed by the outbreak of war with revolutionary France in 1793, split the Whig Party
• January 1792 a group of four men, including Thomas Hardy, a London shoemaker, began meeting to discuss the possibility of forming a group of working men in order to campaign for the vote. On the 25th January 1792 they held a public meeting on parliamentary reform. Only eight people attended but the men decided to form a group called the London Corresponding Society. Early members included John Thelwall, John Horne Tooke, Joseph Gerrald, Olaudah Equiano and Maurice Margarot.
• Henry Hunt (MP) 1773-1835:

  • British radical political reformer who gained the nickname 'orater'
  • 60,000 people demonstrating for parliamentary reform at St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester (August 16, 1819)
  • wore a white hat
  • advocated for Parliamentary reform
  • didn't achieve alot
  • arrested in 1820, tried, and imprisoned for two years for his radical views
  • after 1832 he lost his seat as he relied on a rotten borough
• Francis Burdett MP (1770-1844)

  • English politician and a zealous and courageous advocate of reform who more than once endured imprisonment for his radical views; he later lost interest in uprooting abuses and allied himself with the Conservative Party.
  • worked with Hume and Francis Place --> combination Act
  • vote by ballot
• Henry Flood MP (1732-1791)

  • Anglo-Irish statesman, founder of the Patriot movement that in 1782 won legislative independence for Ireland
  • proposed ambitious bill to extend the vote to all households
• Tom Paine MP (1737-1809):

  • English-American writer whose Common Sense pamphlet and Crisis papers were important influences on the American Revolution -> Rights of Man (1790), a defense of the French Revolution and of republican principles
  • influential on the founding fathers
• William Cobbett (1763-1835):

  • English popular journalist who played an important political role as a champion of traditional rural England against the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution
  • radical tory
  • political register journal -> and the Two Penny Trash
  • reduce corruption
  • Two Penny Trash was due to the stamp duty of 6D
  • imprisoned briefly
  • MP after 1832
• Why didn't reformers succeed before 1832:

  • groups had different aims and ambitions -> were not united
  • vested interests in Parliament blocking change --> loss of power
  • fear of consequences -> French Revolution had been bloody
• Some believed that the system was fit for purpose:

  • parliament already had representation from trade as well as the aristocracy -> fear of being distablised
  • reformers were able to raise issues such as Catholic Emancipation and anti slavery -> focused on one thing
  • no problem with landownership = political power as it was a stake in the country
  • democracy was viewed as dangerous and destabilising
• Historian Dinwiddy -> radical press helped to link peoples social and economic problems with a political solution