<P> Earl Grey, prime minister 1830--1834, and his rejuvenated Whig Party enacted a series of major reforms: the poor law was updated, child labour restricted, and, most important, the Reform Act 1832 refashioned the British electoral system . In 1832 Parliament abolished slavery in the Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 . The government purchased all the slaves for £ 20,000,000 (the money went to rich plantation owners who mostly lived in England), and freed the slaves, most of whom were in the Caribbean sugar islands . </P> <P> The Whigs became champions of Parliamentary reform by making the Reform Act of 1832 their signature measure . It broadened the franchise and ended the system of "rotten borough" and "pocket boroughs" (where elections were controlled by powerful families), and instead redistributed power on the basis of population . It added 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000 in England and Wales . The main effect of the act was to weaken the power of the landed gentry, and enlarge the power of the professional and business middle - class, which now for the first time had a significant voice in Parliament . However, at this point the great majority of manual workers, clerks, and farmers did not have enough property to qualify to vote . Most of them received the vote in 1867 . The aristocracy continued to dominate the Church of England, the most prestigious military and naval posts, and high society, but not business, industry or finance . In terms of national governmental policy, the democratic wishes of the entire people had become decisive . </P> <P> Most historians emphasize the central importance of the legislation of the 1830s - 1860s, although there was a dissenting minority of scholars in the 1960s and 1970s who argued against deep meanings of Whiggish progress because each of the reforms was relatively minor in itself . Historian Richard Davis concludes that the scholarship of the 1970s represented "a vindication of the main outlines of the old "Whig interpretation ." That is, the Reform Act of 1832 was a response to mounting popular pressure . It was "the culmination of a long historical process, and an important turning point in the emergence of a more liberal and broadly based political system...it deserves its old designation of' Great ."' </P> <P> David Thompson has stressed the revolutionary nature of the entire package of reforms: </P>

United kingdom of northern ireland and great britain