KOŘENY GREAT REFORM BILL 1832 (studie a poznámky)
THE ROOTS OF THE GREAT REFORM ACT OF 1832

Summary/Abstract: In order to trace back the roots of the Great Reform Act of 1832, modern English historiography analyses especially the period after the 1760’s. Attention is drawn to social, ideological and political causes. Social questions in relation to the English reform movement became more relevant after the Napoleonic wars, when Great Britain fell into a deep economic recession accompanied by the growing radicalism of the distressed masses. Besides that, some protective measures of the English government (the Corn Law) unpleasantly affected the interests of the unrepresented middle classes. This fact inevitably led them to the conclusion that the unreformed Parliament was not able to defend their vital needs. The ideological background of the English reform movement, deeply influenced by the French revolution, focused on the struggle between the radicalism of Thomas Paine and the conservative ideas of Edmund Burke. Both of them, however, were later superseded by Bentham’s and Mill’s theories, which, unlike the above, included a broader representation of English society. The third cause of the Great Reform Act was the general discontent of the Whigs with the growing power of the Crown. Whig leaders were firmly convinced that the corrupted rotten boroughs under the patronage of the landed aristocracy and the royal executive power were gradually destroying the balance of the constitution and preventing the Whigs from winning elections.

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