This and the horribly bad harvest of 1829 led to an increasing cost of living standard. To make matters worse England's economy was still in the phase of a recession, many people were losing their jobs, and those that had retained their jobs saw a decrease in wages. .
After the reform was passed the voting population doubled from 350,000 in 1831 to 717,000 in 1832. The 1832 Reform Act was a victory for the middle class while the labor class was once again ignored, but for the middle class it was not a complete victory either. The fact is that after 1832 only one in five adult men could vote, though this was better than in the previous years, but it shows a massive population that had no say in public affairs. Those middle class men that did have a vote also had landlords who pressured their tenants to vote a certain way; a tactic that proved to be very effective. Further diluting the middle class vote was the provision in the new reform that required voters to pay at least £10 in rent a year to acquire voting privileges. That provision divided England's new voters geographically. In the North, rent was less expensive and many middle class workers did not meet the requirement, while in the South rent for the middle class would commonly be over that amount. For the upper middle class an additional vote was given under the stipulation that the tenant's rent must exceed £50 per year. The 1832 Reform Act also expanded suffrage by the redistribution of voting districts. Eighty-six boroughs lost at least one seat and forty-two newly formed boroughs gained at least one seat with more than half of those gaining two seats.
The effects of this reform were less felt than one might expect. While many people gained the right to vote the composition of the Parliament changed very little from the years preceding 1832.This is not to say that the reforms were useless, but that they were more of a symbolic victory than a practical one.
