The people don't like their government?! No way!!

There were major problems happening in three countries at this time: England, Ireland, and France. What a surprise!!!

First off, the mess that is England.
Who's in charge? The two major bodies in Parliament were the Whigs and the Tories. At the advent of all these radical movements, the Tories were fearful of anyone demanding change. They repressed all kinds of popular protest. But as time went by, they adapted to the changes in the political atmosphere and became more open-minded. For instance, the Tories passed the Ten Hours Act of 1847, which limited the workday for women and young people to 10 hours. In contrast, the Whigs were consistently pro-business and manufacturing. The one major exception to this was that they pushed through the Reform Bill of 1832, which gave new industrial areas of the country more representation and eliminated the "rotten boroughs" (electoral districts bought by the aristocracy). Although the Whigs were responsible for this bill, the Tories were the ones who responded to the byproduct of this bill- that they had to become more responsive to the needs of the masses (mass politics) or be voted out.

What was going on? The Chartist movement was the major radical program being pushed at this time. It called for universal male suffrage. This movement was extremely radical for its time but when compared to the Revolutions of 1848, it doesn't seem so bad. While both of these things failed, they did sew the seeds for change in the second half of the century.

Second off, poor Ireland, which was COMPLETELY ABANDONED by the British (yes I'm still bitter)
What was going on? The potato famine was devastating almost the entire population, whose only source of substinence was the potato. Absentee lordism was one of the major reasons for the famine. The liberalism of the parties in England just let things be and didn't regulate the work of the Irish farmers. This laissez faire economy only aggravated the situation in Ireland. To make things worse, English lords, even during the famine, demanded that the Irish continue to pay the same amount of taxes and export their same amount of crops to them.

Lastly, weak and fragile France.
Who was in charge?
Louis XVIII was a weak, weak ruler. His inability to pick a side in the debate between the aristocracy and the middle/lower class earned him no supporters. His one major contribution, the Constitutional Charter, was basically a liberal constitution so it angered the aristocracy.  However, it was far from a democratic charter, power was only given to the wealthiest of people who, with the king and his ministers, ruled the land.

Charles X can be characterized as a true reactionary. This means that he was ultra-conservative. Instead of wanting to keep things the way they were, he wanted to turn back the block to the time of Louis XVI. He repudiated (barfed on) the Constitutional Charter and gained much resistance from the radical part of the population (which consisted of the majority of people in France) So basically, after the entire country had just begun to recover from the destruction caused by a revolution against a monarch and aristocratic system, Charles thought it would be a good idea to bring that system back.

Louis Philippe's rule was rather ineffective. His "bourgeois monarchy" produced a lack of social legislation, and a corrupt system dominated by the rich. While he did accept the Constitutional Charter, he was not able to prevent the Revolutions of 1848 from overtaking the nation.