ABSTRACT
On 15 April 1811, Major John Cartwright, founder of the 1781 Society for Constitutional Information, wrote to fellow reform veteran Christopher Wyvill, leader of the Yorkshire Association, that fear alone would persuade parliament to reform itself. 'We are to remember that the despotism being legislative, it must be the very agent of its own reformation' (Cartwright, 1826: ii, 7). In 1776, Cartwright had outlined a six-point reform programme including the secret ballot, equal constituencies and the payment of MPs in Take Tour Choice!, a pamphlet that would inform the demands of parliamentary reformers for the next century. The long struggle for the widening of the franchise has a deceptively united platform and appearance which should not blind students to the existence of serious social and political divisions amongst reformers (Philp, 1991). The trials and tribulations of popular radicalism from 1792 to 1820 moreover comprise but one part of the history of reform movements during this period. The abolition of the slave trade, repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and reform of the old poor law were all mooted during these years, as were evangelical moral campaigns for the suppression of vice and the conversion of the heathen at home and abroad. Some of these causes, most notably the abolition of the slave trade, commanded far more public interest and support than the reform of parliament, while others, such as Catholic Emancipation, attracted little public support on the British mainland (Royle and Walvin, 1982).
