In the following passage, in which sense was the phrase easy target used ?
1.Lowering of the wealth prerequisite was an easy job to succeed.
2.Lowering of the wealth prerequisite issue could be used for manipulating the political scene and igniting protest .Because it was obvious injustice in the country.
The extension of the voting franchise that began in England in 1832 with the Great Reform Bill initiated, albeit slowly, a process of liberalization unseen in the history of the British Parliament. Previously, power rested in the hands of the few aristocrats with enough property and wealth to pass a relatively high property requirement for voting and holding office.
Yet while the lowering of the wealth prerequisite provided an easy target for modern liberals when arguing for the democratization of Parliament, this democratization at first did not extend to the working class.
Most representatives in the Commons came through Eton to either Cambridge or Oxford where, under the tutelage of the same professors, these future leaders developed a similar outlook on the world: the superiority of the British system, the rightness of imperialism, the power of industry, the benefits of trade, and the value of general isolation from the Continent. These views, though subject to some slight degree differences between Liberals and Conservatives, remained common through most of the House. Such views did not square with the new concerns of the workers who had neither received an elite education, nor, in some cases, an education at all.