ABSTRACT
Reformers in the 1860s were on solid ground when they argued that the electoral system was still grossly unrepresentative. Middle-class reformers in the provinces looked to an extension of the franchise as a means of breaking the aristocratic monopoly of political power; something which the 1832 Reform Act and Corn Law repeal in 1846 had conspicuously failed to do. Enfranchised working-class elite would serve as crucial reinforcements for a campaign to push the Palmerstonian Whig-Liberal coalition in a radical direction. Lowe and Cranborne were the leading spokesmen for the anti-reformers. They saw the working classes as corrupt, brutal and ignorant. The Reform League was not so closely connected with the Liberal party. Its trade union members in particular saw parliamentary reform as an essential preliminary to assaults on the industrial front, assaults which would be most unwelcome to the employers who formed the hard core of the Reform Union.
