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Historians usually cite Britain as the homeland of 19th-century liberalism and contrast it to the Metternichian reaction in central Europe. Truth exists in this contrast, but it should not obscure the strength of conservatism in post-1815 Britain. The landed aristocracy still dominated politics and society. They composed less than 0.002 percent of the population but received more than 29 percent of the national income. Dukes, earls, and viscounts filled the cabinet. The House of Commons was elected by less than 3 percent of the population. If liberal reforms succeeded in that house, the House of Lords still held an aristocratic veto. The patronage system allowed this elite to perpetuate aristocratic domination of army and navy commands, the diplomatic corps, high government posts, and the leadership of the Church of England.

The English record on minority nationalism resembled that of Metternich and Nicholas I. An Act of Union of 1801 had absorbed Ireland into the United Kingdom, and the Protestant ascendancy of the 18th century had transferred landownership and political power in Ireland to the Protestant minority. The Catholic peasantry faced poverty and famine; suffering was so severe that some Irish nationalists have accused the British of genocide. Even British visitors to the Irish countryside were horrified by the suffering. Sir Walter Scott wrote of his 1825 visit: "Their poverty has not been exaggerated: it is on the extreme verge of human misery." Twenty years later, conditions were even worse, and during the potato famine of 1845-48, Ireland lost more than 25 percent of its population--experiencing more than 1 million deaths and losing 1.5 million refugees in a population of 8 million. Starving peasants ate their domestic pets.

Ireland needed a great defender, but the first parliamentary champion of Ireland could not take his seat in the House of Commons because British law excluded Catholics from office. Daniel O'Connell was a Jesuit educated member of the Catholic gentry. He demanded the repeal of the Act of Union and the treatment of Ireland "not as a subordinate province, but . . . as a separate and distinct country." Lawful repeal was hardly likely. O'Connell could attract 100,000 people to a rally, but the House of Commons stood against him by 529-34. His experiences in the French Revolution, however, had convinced O'Connell of the horror and futility of revolution, and he continued to work for a parliamentary victory and reject violence.

Early 19th-century Britain was not yet a model of liberal democracy. However, Parliament accepted some important reforms between 1832 and 1846. Members did not democratize Britain, displace the governing elite, or encompass the radical agenda, but they made Britain the liberal leader of Europe. The reform of Parliament in 1832 illustrates the nature of British liberal reform. It had been discussed since the 1780s, but little had been achieved except outlawing the sale of seats in the House of Commons (1809). The Reform Bill of 1832, won by the moderate liberals in a Whig government, enfranchised the new business and industrial elite, expanding the electorate from 2.1 percent of the population to 3.5 percent. The bill abolished "rotten boroughs" such as Old Sarum, the ruins of a medieval town that had no residents but still sent two members to Parliament. This eliminated fifty-six constituencies whose 111 seats were transferred to manufacturing towns such as Birmingham and Manchester, neither of which had representation in Parliament before 1832. . .

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