1867 Reform Act
This extended the right to vote still further down the class ladder, adding just short of a million voters—including many workingmen—and doubling the electorate, to almost two million in England and Wales. It, too, created major shock waves in contemporary British culture, some of which appear in works such as Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy and John Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olive, as authors debated whether this shift of power would create democracy that would, in turn, destroy high culture.
The opposite case had been argued by the 'Chartists', who campaigned from 1838 for a wider reform. The movement petered out in the 1850s, but achieved most of its demands in the longer run.
Read more about this topic: Reform Bills
Famous quotes containing the words reform and/or act:
“There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of “expediency.” There is no such thing as sliding up- hill. In morals the only sliders are backsliders.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Humour is the making others act or talk absurdly and unconsciously; wit is the pointing out and ridiculing that absurdity consciously, and with more or less ill-nature.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)