The Whigs protested that the Reform Bill was _a final measure_, and Sir Francis Burdett, the veteran reformer, was content to vote with the Tories when the Act had become law. But there is no finality in politics, and the Reform Bill was only the removal of a barrier on the road to democracy. The Tories described the Bill as revolutionary, but as a matter of fact the Act of 1832 neither fulfilled the hopes of its friends nor the fears of its foes. What the Act did was to transfer the balance of power from the landed aristocracy, which had been in the main predominant since 1688, to the richer members of the middle class--the big farmers in the country, the prosperous shopkeepers in the towns. The working class was still voteless, and the old democratic franchise of Preston and Westminster was gone from those boroughs. The first reformed Parliament met early in 1833, and the change in the character of the House of Commons was seen at once. Government accepted responsibility for legislation in a way that had never been known before. The New Poor Law, 1834, and the new Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, were the beginning of our present system of local government. Slavery was abolished in all British Colonies in 1833. Greville, in his Memoirs, gives us an impression of the new regime in Parliament as it appeared to one who belonged to the old dethroned aristocracy. "The first thing that strikes one is its inferiority to preceding Houses of Commons, and the presumption, impertinence, and self-sufficiency of the new members.... There exists no _party_ but that of the Government; the Irish act in a body under O'Connell to the number of about forty; the Radicals are scattered up and down without a leader, numerous, restless, turbulent, bold, and active; the Tories, without a head, frightened, angry, and sulky." THE WORKING CLASS STILL UNREPRESENTED But the working classes were the really disappointed people in the country. They had worked for the reformers, and their energies--and their violence--had been the driving force that had carried the Bill into law. If their expectations were extravagant and their hopes over-heated, the more bitter was their distress at the failure of the Reform Act to accomplish the social improvements that had been predicted. CHARTISM So the working class in despair of help from the Government, decided to get the franchise for themselves, and for twelve years, 1838-1850, Chartism was the great popular movement. The _Five Points of the People's Charter_ were proclaimed in 1838: (1) Universal Suffrage; (2) Vote by Ballot; (3) Annual Parliaments; (4) Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of Parliament; (5) Payment of Members. A Sixth Point--Equal Electoral Districts--was left out in the National Petition.