SMITH, Sydney; and others.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Mr. Dyson's Speech to the Freeholders, on Reform... A pamphlet volume of three works discussing parliamentary reform in the lead up the Great Reform Act of 1832. Sydney Smith's pamphlet is the third in this collection. The title page of the second, A Practical View, is signed by Nathaniel Hibbert (1794-1865), Smith's son-in-law, while the front pastedown bears the bookplate of the Hibberts' Munden House estate.In the early years of the 19th century, the uneven distribution of parliamentary seats and the restriction of the franchise to wealthy landowners were increasingly seen as problems which needed to be addressed. Once these problems made their way to Parliament, Sydney Smith (1771-1845), the wit and leading campaigner for Catholic emancipation, argued energetically in favour of the proposed Reform Act. Mr Dyson's Speech to the Freeholders exhorts its readers to "Stick to the Bill - it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede" (p. 1).Against Smithian progressivism, Thomas George Fonnereau (1789-1850), a lawyer and conservative polemicist, argues that the existing system was the best and most representative arrangement possible in Britain.In contrast, Henry Brougham (1778-1868), Lord High Chancellor 1830-4, worked to pass the Reform Bill through the House of Lords. Brougham had established a reputation as a reformer - earlier in his Parliamentary career, he mounted a programme to overhaul the English legal system by creating a new network of local courts. His pamphlet, the

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