How far would you agree that fear of popular hostility was the main reason why governments enacted parliamentary reforms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

... How far would you agree that fear of popular hostility was the main reason why governments enacted parliamentary reforms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? The reform movement first started to achieve mass support in the 1760s; during the years of the French Revolution it even appealed to the members of the anti-reform Whig party but as war with France started, the authorities feared revolution as had happened in France and so used repressive measures in a bid to stamp out these new ideas. It was in 1815 however that the reform movement began to become more significant - when widespread unemployment attracted the masses to the idea of reform. But as conditions improved during the 1820s the pressure for reform decreased - as Cobbett said, "I defy you to agitate a man on a full stomach". The reform movement was not unified nor was it on a national scale.

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