![]() The other great industrial city of the era, Birmingham, starts from a lower base. There is a comparable rise in the population - with a leap of 60% in a single decade, the 1840s, from 250,000 to 400,000 inhabitants. The amount of raw cotton brought ashore in Liverpool shows a threefold increase between 18, from half a million bales a year to 1.5 million. Eight new docks are built in Liverpool between 18. The growth of Manchester's textile industry brings equivalent prosperity to the nearby port of Liverpool - just in time since the slave trade, the previous source of Liverpool's wealth, is made illegal in 1807. By 1851 this conurbation has grown to 455,000. Manchester and the closely related town of Salford have 25,000 inhabitants between them in 1772. The availability of work in Britain's mills and factories, particularly after the introduction of steam power, has the effect of drawing ever-increasing numbers of people from the countryside into rapidly expanding cities. The growth of industrial cities: 18th - 19th century One of the most pressing is the recent growth of new cities. And when a Liberal prime minister, Gladstone, presses for Home Rule for Ireland, half his party hive off as the Liberal Unionists.įor these reasons the century is best described not under a succession of prime ministers of one party or the other, but in terms of the great issues of the day. The two most aggressive prime ministers in their foreign policy, on behalf of British interests abroad, are the Liberal Palmerston and the Conservative Disraeli. It is the Conservatives who extend the franchise to bring in more voters in 1867, and the Liberals who continue the process in 1884. Eventually Peel's own minority faction merges, after his death, with the Liberals. ![]() Forced through parliament in 1846 by a Conservative prime minister, Robert Peel, the issue splits the party. Similar uncertainty surrounds the great issue of the 1840s, the repeal of the Corn Laws. In broad terms the Liberals are more inclined to pass measures of social welfare (the Factory Act of 1833, the Ten Hours' Act of 1847), yet the greatest campaigner on these issues is a Conservative MP, Lord Shaftesbury, and his party is responsible for the Mines Act of 1842. In practice the two parties are rarely predictable in their attitudes to the great issues of the century. Because of pushing through the new legislation, the Whigs are now seen as the party of reform and during the 1830s they begin to acquire a new name as Liberals (a term first applied only to the left wing of the party, where members are in favour of the 'liberation' movements already successful in Latin America and now under way elsewhere - see Liberal and conservative).Īt the same period the Tories begin to call themselves Conservatives, making the most of their recent opposition to reform by suggesting that their policy is to conserve all that is best in the traditional British way of life. ![]() In the shifting political landscape after the Reform Act, the old party loyalties of Whig and Tory take on new colours.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |