The 1850's were a rather bleak period concerning parliamentary reform. A number of factors contributed to the continual failure of any attempt to secure any reform in the 1850's. Perhaps the greatest of these was indifference. The collapse of Chartism was followed by a period of greatly reduced activism for parliamentary reform, while the Anti-Corn Law League never really moved into the area of political activism once it had achieved its specific objective of repealing …showed first 75 words of 2050 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2050 total…his love for power and popularity. He defeated Gladstone's bill in 1866 in an attempt to split the party, an introduced his own bill in 1867 primarily in order to gain liberal votes. It is important to realise though, that his own act meant that there was a working class majority in all the major cities of Great Britain, and, surprisingly for him, they used the votes he gave them to bring Gladstone back into office in 1872.