ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about Britain's road to reform during the period 1827-1832. By the beginning of 1827, Lord Liverpool had held a broad coalition of Tories together in government for almost fifteen years. His administration endured several bumpy periods, some caused by outside events and some by personal rivalries within the government. He survived them all, and by keeping a lid on the particularly fractious question of Catholic Emancipation, secured what must have seemed to his Whig opponents almost a permanent lease on power. Robert Peel and Viscount Wellington, who had given some consideration four years earlier to resolving the Catholic question, thought it unlikely that Emancipation could be blocked. Wellington delayed, thus encouraging mass Catholic demonstrations in Ireland in opposition to which Protestant, pro-Unionist and often violently inclined Brunswick clubs responded. Political Unions often reflected the social structure of the towns in which they were based. In factory towns, the political priorities of textile labourers and manufacturers usually differed.
