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The Representation of the People Act 1867, 30 & 31 Vict. c. 102 (known informally as the Reform Act of 1867 or the Second Reform Act) was a piece of British legislation that enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the first time. Before the Act, only one million of the seven million adult males in England and Wales could vote; the Act immediately doubled that number. Moreover, by the end of 1868 all male heads of household were enfranchised as a result of the end of compounding of rents. However, the Act introduced only a negligible redistribution of seats. The overall intent was to help the Conservative Party, yet it resulted in their loss of the 1868 general election. ==Background== For the decades after the Great Reform Act of 1832, cabinets, in that era leading from both Houses, had resisted attempts to push through further reform, and in particular left unfulfilled the six demands of the Chartist movement. After 1848, this movement declined rapidly,〔ed. ''Christopher John Murray,'' "Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850: A-K", ''Fitzroy Dearborn Pub. (2004),'' p 115.〕 and elite opinion began to change . It was thus only 28 years after the initial, quite modest, Great Reform Act that leading politicians thought it prudent to introduce further electoral reform. John Russell attempted this in 1860, but the Prime Minister, a fellow Liberal, Lord Palmerston was against any further electoral reform. When Palmerston died in 1865, however, the floodgates for reform were opened. The Union victory in the American Civil War in 1865 emboldened the forces in Britain that demanded more democracy and public input into the political system, to the dismay of the upper class landed gentry who identified with the US Southern States planters and feared the loss of influence and a popular radical movement. Influential commentators included Walter Bagehot, Thomas Carlyle, Anthony Trollope and John Stuart Mill.〔Brent E. Kinser, ''The American Civil War in the Shaping of British Democracy'' (Ashgate, 2011)〕 In 1866, Prime Minister Earl Russell (as John became) introduced a Reform Bill. It was a cautious bill, which proposed to enfranchise "respectable" working men, excluding unskilled workers and what was known as the "residuum", those seen by MPs as the "feckless and criminal" poor. This was ensured by a £7 householder qualification, which had been calculated to require an income of 26 shillings a week . This entailed two "fancy franchises," emulating measures of 1854, a £10 lodger qualification for the boroughs, and a £50 savings qualification in the counties. Liberals claimed that 'the middle classes, strengthened by the best of the artisans, would still have the preponderance of power'. When it came to the vote, however, this bill split the Liberal Party: a split partly engineered by Benjamin Disraeli, who incited those threatened by the bill to rise up against it. On one side were the reactionary conservative Liberals, known as the Adullamites; on the other were pro-reform Liberals who supported the Government. The Adullamites were supported by Tories and the liberal Whigs were supported by radicals and reformists. The bill was thus defeated and the Liberal government of Russell resigned. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reform Act 1867」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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