THE MAKING OF BRITISH DEMOCRACY Dr Robert Saunders, Jesus College

Lecture Themes ReligionEmpire Gender‘Democracy’

THE GREAT REFORM ACT

The French Revolution, 1789

OLD SARUM POPULATION: 0MPs: 2

Popular Protest

The Song of Freedom ‘God is our guide! from field, from wave, From plough, from anvil, and from loom, We come, our country’s rights to save, And speak a tyrant faction’s doom; We raise the watchword Liberty. We will, we will, we will be free!’

‘The Tree of Taxation’

THE REFORM GOVERNMENT, 1830

Bristol Burns OCTOBER 1831

‘SATAN – REFORMER’ ‘Satan stood high upon Brandon Hill, With his fiery eyeballs glowing; He banged the ground with his swinging tail, And the Demons came round him, and cried, All hail! See, see, how Reform is going! Satan he stood in the blazing square, In the midst of conflagration; And shouted, Reform! – the day’s my own, I’ve won me on earth another throne – And this is my Coronation’. Blackwood’s, April 1832