Assess the Significance of the Question of Parliamentary Reform in the Careers of Gladstone and Disraeli 1865-68?

The 1850's were a rather bleak period concerning parliamentary reform. A number of factors contributed to the continual failure of any attempt to secure any reform in the 1850's. Perhaps the greatest of these was indifference. The collapse of Chartism was followed by a period of greatly reduced activism for parliamentary reform, while the Anti-Corn Law League never really moved into the area of political activism once it had achieved its specific objective of repealing the Corn Laws. It could be also argued that the growth of economic prosperity in mid-Victorian Britain reduced the immediate necessity for parliamentary reform, while foreign affairs held public attention in a quite unprecedented way. Such distractions from parliamentary reform included the Crimean War and events in Italy and Poland. Also there was Palmerston, (Prime Minister of the 50's) who was very popular and very powerful and had always succeeded in keeping a tight rein on the radicals in parliament.…