ABSTRACT
In 1849, the Lord Liverpool corn merchant and Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolton, Joshua Walmsley, became the first President of the National Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association, which called for equal electoral districts. The largely middle-class National Reform Union, founded in Manchester in 1864, was less cautious than Gladstone. It proposed both a household suffrage and equal electoral districts. The Unions political orientation was strongly pro-Liberal and many of its prominent members had also been members of the Anti-Corn Law League. The following year, a Reform League was founded in London, by the prominent lawyer-radical Edmond Beales. It sought full manhood suffrage and a secret ballot. A number of old Chartists joined the League but its leadership came from the new model trade unions. George Howell and Robert Applegarth happily collaborated with the Reform Union without animosity.
