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Viewed from the outside, the prospects for a Whig government did not look good in 1846. The Whig party's will to resist coalition with the Peelites seemed very weak, as its liberal wing had grown very moderate and the old Whig families seemed to be withdrawing from active leadership altogether. The alternative to coalition with the Peelites, some kind of agreement with the Radicals as in 1835, was no longer feasible. If an aggravated reprise such as that of the late 1830s was to be avoided, a liberal–conservative coalition — certainly bringing together Robert Peel and Lord John Russell, and possibly roping free-trade Radicals into the bargain — seemed inevitable. This chapter focuses on the last Whig government (lasting from 1846 to 1852), the Condition of England politics, the Condition of Britain politics, the rise and fall of the General Board of Health, and the passing of the Whigs.

This chapter focuses on the passage of the Local Government Act of 1858, which abolished the General Board of Health. The drafting of a Bill to amend the Public Health Act of 1848 in such a way as to make it possible to abolish the General Board was begun in 1857 by Palmerston's stepson, W. F. Cowper, who had succeeded Sir Benjamin Hall as President of the Board of Health. The new Act, which came into force in September 1858, was known as the Local Government Act. The Act enabled the localities to continue to take advantage of the powers contained in the Public Health Act of 1848 in the new circumstances which would exist when the General Board was finally abolished.

This chapter focuses on the Local Government Act of 1858. It was a versatile piece of legislation, which could be adopted by any representative council, or body of commissioners, and places which already possessed local Acts were allowed, like Ryde, to lay down the law in exchange for the general Act, or, like Ventnor, and to a lesser extent Huddersfield, to pick and choose their way through the clauses of the general Act and the model clauses Acts which were embodied in it, taking what they judged they needed to supplement their present powers. The most important feature of the Act was the recognition of the existence of places like Sandown, which were unable to afford a private Act, and unwilling to subject themselves to a General Board of Health. There was still a huge unrealised potential for self-government, and the Local Government Act promised to refresh parts of the body politic which other Acts of parliament had been unable to reach.