The Reform Act, which is widely credited with launching modern democracy in the United Kingdom, received royal assent.

The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to reform the electoral system in England and Wales and to expand the franchise. The measure was brought forward by the Whig government of Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey.

Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government. While the power to veto by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century.