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The Catholic Emancipation Act was a forced decision that split the Tory party and brought the Whigs to power in 1830. The Whigs were determined to reform the Parliament and the parliamentary franchise, which had not changed since the reign of Elizabeth I. The electoral franchise and distribution of seats in Parliament were in a mess. Different parts of the country were represented in an uneven and unjust way. The county of Cornwall where the population was less than the population of Manchester or Birmingham elected 44 men to the House of Commons, but neither of these big industrial cities elected a single M. P. The voting was not secret, the whole system was corrupt and unrepresentative.
The confusion at Westminster reflected the situation in the country. There were outbreaks of machinebreaking and riots: people exploited at the factories by factory owners and left unemployed by machines replacing them, were outraged; they smashed machines blaming Ned Ludd for it and bearing his name – Luddites, wearing masks and damaging the factories.
The Parliament Reform came together with railways. The Manchester and Liverpool Railway was opened by the Duke of Wellington in 1830. George Stephenson built a locomotive – “the Rocket”, which reached a maximum speed of fourty eight kilometres per hour.
The technological revolution was going on strengthened by social reforms that were obviously lagging behind.
The reformed Parliament passed a number of progressive acts, due to Lord Shaftesbury the first effective Factory Act was passed, limitting the hours worked ) by children in cotton factories to nine, prohibiting their employment under nine years of age, and appointing inspectors to see that the decisions were enforced.
The state assumed also some responsibility for the poor. According to the Poor Law all the able bodied poor were to go to the workhouses where the conditions were terrible. It was described by Ch. Dickens in his novel “Oliver Twist”. The working classes were infuriated by the injustice and inhumanity of the Poor Law and demanded more radical reforms.