Motivation to change comes through many means. In regards to political and social change, it comes with not only resistance but polarized opposition. There is evidence of this throughout history. Today, people arguably have more social liberties than ever before. However, people continue to fight for more freedoms as they have for centuries. In Victorian England, power between the monarchy, the prime minister, parliament, and the people was still trying to find balance. Additionally, with education and communication more widespread than ever before, larger social groups were able to organize and discuss what political rights they wanted, including more voting power.

By the end of the Napoleonic wars, famine, poor economy and a lack of suffrage in England provoked thousands of citizens towards political radicalism. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, who frequently advocated for Parliamentary reform, organized a protest. On august 16th, 1819 at St Peter's Field in Manchester, over 70,000 people came to plead with the government for their right to a vote that matters. Due to the crowd's size, the crowed was broken up by an armed military guard. Over a dozen people were killed and nearly 1,000 others were injured by the horses and the soldiers' sabers.

This protest was likely the largest peaceful protest in history at the time. It set the precedent for thousands of other peaceful protests including MLKjr. In Victorian era literature, we see many groups of individuals advocating for more social and political freedoms. Lower-class workers from Oliver Twist, children in mines in "the Cry of the Children", and women in just about everything, all searching for equal representation and change that would support their most basic rights.

Works Cited

Chandler, James. “On Peterloo, 16 August 1819.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=james-chandler-on-peterloo-16-august-1819. Accessed on 12.05.2018