Editing Whigs (British political party) (section)

==== Return to power ====
[[File:William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.jpg|thumb|''[[Portrait of Lord Melbourne (Partridge)|Portrait of Lord Melbourne]]'' by [[John Partridge (artist)|John Partridge]]. Melbourne was twice Prime Minister during the 1830s.]]
Whigs restored their unity by supporting moral reforms, especially the abolition of slavery. They triumphed in 1830 as champions of Parliamentary reform. They made Lord Grey prime minister 1830–1834 and the [[Reform Act 1832]] championed by Grey became their signature measure. It broadened the franchise and ended the system of "[[rotten 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. Only the upper and middle classes voted, so this shifted power away from the landed aristocracy to the urban middle classes. In 1832, the party abolished enslavement in the British Empire with the [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833]]. It purchased and freed the slaves, especially those in the Caribbean sugar islands. After parliamentary investigations demonstrated the horrors of child labour, limited reforms were passed in 1833. The Whigs also passed the [[Poor Law Amendment Act 1834]] that reformed the administration of relief to the poor<ref>E. L. Woodward, ''The Age of Reform, 1815–1870'' (1938), pp. 120–145, 325–330, 354–357.</ref> and the [[Marriage Act 1836]] that allowed civil marriages.

It was around this time that the great Whig historian [[Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay|Thomas Babington Macaulay]] began to promulgate what would later be coined the [[Whig history|Whig view of history]], in which all of English history was seen as leading up to the culminating moment of the passage of Lord Grey's reform bill. This view led to serious distortions in later portrayals of 17th-century and 18th-century history, as Macaulay and his followers attempted to fit the complex and changing factional politics of the [[English Restoration|Restoration]] into the neat categories of 19th-century political divisions.

In 1836, a private gentleman's Club was constructed in [[Pall Mall, London|Pall Mall]], [[Piccadilly]] as a consequence of the successful [[Reform Act 1832]]. The [[Reform Club]] was founded by [[Edward Ellice Sr.]], [[Member of parliament|MP for Coventry]] and Whig [[Whip (politics)|Whip]], whose riches came from the [[Hudson's Bay Company]] but whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of the [[Reform Act 1832]]. This new club, for members of both Houses of [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]], was intended to be a forum for the [[Political radicalism|radical]] ideas which the First Reform Bill represented: a bastion of liberal and progressive thought that became closely associated with the [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]], who largely succeeded the [[Whig Party (UK)|Whigs]] in the second half of the 19th century.

Until the decline of the Liberal Party in the early 20th century, it was ''de rigueur'' for Liberal MPs and peers to be members of the Reform Club, being regarded as an unofficial party headquarters. However, in 1882 the [[National Liberal Club]] was established under [[William Ewart Gladstone]]'s chairmanship, designed to be more "inclusive" towards Liberal [[grandee]]s and activists throughout the United Kingdom.