Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England
by Arnold Toynbee
1884


I Introductory

    The subject of these lectures is the industrial and Agrarian
Revolution at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth centuries. The course is divided into three parts. The
first deals with Adam Smith and the England of his time. It will
describe England on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, and the
system of regulation and protection of industry as it existed in
1760. It will give also an outline of Adam Smith's hook, its aims
and character, and especially his theory of free trade. The
second part will group itself round the work of Malthus, who
dealt not so much with the causes of wealth as with the causes of
poverty, with the distribution of wealth rather than with its
production. It will describe England in the midst of the
industrial Revolution, and will inquire into the problem of
pauperism and the subjects connected with it. The third part will
he associated with the name of Ricardo, and will deal with
England at the time of the Peace. It will discuss the doctrine of
rent and wages together with certain theories of economic
progress, and will cover the questions of currency, so much
agitated at that period, and the history of the commercial and
financial changes which followed the Peace.
    I have chosen the subject because it was in this period that
modern Political Economy took its rise. It has been a weakness of
the science, as pursued in England, that it has been too much
dissociated from History. Adam Smith and Malthus, indeed, had
historical minds; but the form of modern text-books is due to
Ricardo, whose mind was entirely unhistorical. Yet there is a
double advantage in combining the two studies. In the first place
Political Economy is better understood by this means. Abstract
propositions are seen in a new light when studied in relation to
the facts which were before the writer at the time when he
formulated them. So regarded they are at once more vivid and less
likely to mislead. Ricardo becomes painfully interesting when he
read the history of his time. And, in the second place, History
also is better understood when studied in connection with
Political Economy; for the latter not only teaches us in reading
History to look out for the right kind of facts, but enables us
to explain many phenomena like those attending the introduction
of enclosures and machinery, or the effects of different systems
of currency, which without its assistance would remain
unintelligible. The careful deductive reasoning, too, which
Political Economy teaches is of great importance to the
historian, and the habits of mind acquired from it are even more
valuable than the knowledge of principles which it gives,
especially to students of facts, who might otherwise be
overwhelmed by the mass of their materials.
    Of late years, however, there has been a steady sustained
attack upon the abstract Deductive Method of Political Economy
pursued by Ricardo and Mill, and an attempt to set up historical
investigation in its place as the only true method of economic
inquiry. This attack rests on a misconception of the function of
the Deductive Method. The best exposition of the place of
Abstract Political Economy is to be found in Bagehot's Economic
Studies. Bagehot points out that this abstract science holds good
only upon certain assumptions, but though the assumptions are
often not entirely correct, the results may yet be approximately
true. Thus the economists, firstly, regard only one part of man's
nature, and treat him simply as a money-making animal; secondly,
they disregard the influence of custom, and only take account of
competition. Certain laws are laid down under these assumptions;
as, for instance, that the rate of wages always tends to an
equality, the permanent difference obtaining in various
employments being only sufficient to balance the favourable or
unfavourable circumstances attending each of them-a law which is
only true after a certain stage of civilisation and in so far as
the acquisition of wealth is the sole object of men. Such
hypothetical laws, though leading only to rough conclusions, are
yet useful in giving us a point of view from which to observe and
indicate the existence of strong over-mastering tendencies.
Advocates of the Historical Method, like Mr Cliffe Leslie,
therefore, go too far when they condemn the Deductive Method as
radically false. There is no real opposition between the two. The
apparent opposition is due to a wrong use of deduction; to a
neglect on the part of those employing it to examine closely
their assumptions and to bring their conclusions to the test of
fact; to arguments based on premises which are not only not
verified but absolutely untrue (as in the wage-fund theory); and
generally to the failure to combine induction with deduction. But
this misuse of the method does not imply any radical faultiness
in it. The right method in any particular case must be largely
determined by the nature of the problem. Neither is it fair to
make abstract Political Economy responsible for the confusion in
many minds between its laws and the precepts which are based on
them. It is a pure science, and its end is knowledge. But the
Political Economy of the press and the platform is a practical
science, that is, a body of rules and maxims to guide conduct.
Journalists and members of Parliament confound the laws of the
pure science with the maxims of the practical science. It was
thus that Mr Gladstone in the Land Act controversy of 1881 was
constantly accused of violating the laws of Political Economy. It
was impossible for Mr Gladstone to do any such thing. The laws of
Political Economy can no more be violated than those of physical
science. What the journalists meant was that he had departed from
a great economic precept - that which recommends freedom of
contract.
    The Historical Method pursues a different line of
investigation. It examines the actual causes of economic
development and considers the influence of institutions, such as
the medieval guilds, our present land-laws, or the political
constitution of any given country, in determining the
distribution of wealth. Without the aid of the Historical Method
it would be impossible, for instance, to understand why one-half
of the land in the United Kingdom is owned by 2512 persons.
    And not only does it investigate the stages of economic
development in a given country, but it compares them with those
which have obtained in other countries and times, and seeks by
such comparison to discover laws of universal application. Take,
as an instance of the discoveries of this Comparative Political
Economy, the tendency which Sir H. Maine and M. de Laveleye have
pointed out to pass from collective to individual ownership of
land. This is a law which is true of nearly all civilised
countries. We must be careful, however, not to generalise too
hastily in these matters. A clever pamphlet lately published in
Dublin appeals to another generalisation of Sir H. Maine -
'Maine's Law,' as it is denominated - in condemnation of recent
legislation. 'Sir H. Maine,' says the writer, 'in his Ancient Law
has remarked that the movement of all progressive societies has
hitherto been a movement from status to contract. The demand of
this agitation is that Ireland should be legislatively declared a
retrograde society, and that the social movement should be from
contract back again to status.' 'is it expedient,' asks another,
'to reform our laws so as to assimilate them to those in use
among nations of an inferior social development?' A deeper study
of existing civilisation in England, and of other civilisations,
past and present, would have shown that the step was not a
retrograde one - that whilst the sphere of contract has been
widening, it has been also narrowing, and that such a condition
of things as we see in Ireland has never existed anywhere else
without deep social misery, outrage, and disturbance. Custom or
law or public opinion, or all three, have intervened in the past,
and will intervene in the future. It is true that there is a
movement from status to contract; yet if we look closely, we find
that the State has over and over again had to interfere to
restrict the power of individuals in which this movement results.
The real course of development has been first from status to
contract, then from contract to a new kind of status determined
by the law or, in other words, from unregulated to regulated
contract. The Historical Method is also of value because it makes
us see where economic laws and precepts are relative. The old
economists were wont to speak as if these laws and precepts were
universal. Free trade, for instance, is a sound policy, no doubt,
for England, and for all nations at a certain stage of
development; but it is open to any one to say that free trade is
only good under certain conditions. No English economist, it is
true, has dared to say this. Mr Jevons, to take an example, would
admit restrictions only for considerations of the most paramount
importance.6 But it is an unjustifiable prejudgment of the
question to lay down that this policy must be wise at all times
and places. I do not mean to assert, however, that there are not
some laws which are universally true, such as the law of
diminishing returns.
    This discussion about method may seem barren, but it is not
really so. Take such a question as the functions of the State. Mr
Senior spent much time in attempting to discover an universal
formula which should define their proper limit all the world
over. Such an attempt must be abandoned. The proper limits of
Government interference are relative to the nature of each
particular state and the stage of its civilisation. It is a
matter of great importance at the present day for us to discover
what these limits are in our own case, for administration bids
fair to claim a large share of our attention in the future. It
would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in
mind the problems of the present, and go to that past to seek
large views of what is of lasting importance to the human race.
It is an old complaint that histories leave out of sight those
vital questions which are connected with the condition of the
people. The French Revolution has indeed profoundly modified our
views of history, but much still remains to be done in that
direction. If I could persuade some of those present to study
Economic History, to follow out the impulse originally given by
Malthus to the study of the history of the mass of the people, I
should be indeed glad. Party historians go to the past for party
purposes; they seek to read into the past the controversies of
the present. You must pursue facts for their own sake, but
penetrated with a vivid sense of the problems of your own time.
This is not a principle of perversion, but a principle of
selection. You must have some principle of selection, and you
could not have a better one than to pay special attention to the
history of the social problems which are agitating the world now,
for you may be sure that they are problems not of temporary but
of lasting importance.

II. England in 1760

Population

    Previously to 1760 the old industrial system obtained in
England; none of the great mechanical inventions had been
introduced; the agrarian changes were still in the future. It is
this industrial England which we have to contrast with the
industrial England of to-day. For determining the population of
the time we have no accurate materials. There are no official
returns before 1801. A census had been proposed in 1753, but
rejected as 'subversive of the last remains of English liberty.'
In this absence of trustworthy data all sorts of wild estimates
were formed. During the American War a great controversy raged on
this subject. Dr Price, an advocate of the Sinking Fund,
maintained that population had in the interval between 1690 and
1777 declined from 6,596,075 to 4,763,670. On the other hand, Mr
Howlett, Vicar of Dunmow, in Essex, estimated the population in
1780 at 8,691,000, and Arthur Young, in 1770, at 8,500,000 on the
lowest estimate. These, however, are the extremes in either
direction. The computations now most generally accepted are those
made by Mr Finlaison (Actuary to the National Debt Office), and
published in the Preface to the Census Returns of 1831. These are
based on an examination of the registers of baptisms and burials
of the eighteenth century. But the data are deficient in three
respects: because the number of people existing at the date when
the computation begins is a matter of conjecture; because in some
parishes there were no registers; and because the registration,
being voluntary, was incomplete. Mr Finlaison, however, is stated
to have subjected his materials to 'every test suggested by the
present comparatively advanced state of physical and statistical
science.'
    Now according to Mr Finlaison, the population of England and
Wales was, in 1700, 5,134,516, in 1750, 6,039,684, an increase of
not quite a million, or between 17 and 18 per cent. In the first
half of the century. in 1801 the population of England and Wales
was 9,187,176, showing an increase of three millions, or more
than 52 per cent. In the second half.8 The difference in the rate
of increase is significant of the great contrast presented by the
two periods. In the former, England, though rapidly increasing in
wealth owing to her extended commercial relations, yet retained
her old industrial organisation; the latter is the age of
transition to the modern industrial system, and to improved
methods of agriculture.
    The next point to consider is the distribution of population.
A great difference will be found here between the state of things
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, or in Adam Smith's
time, and that prevailing now. Every one remembers Macaulay's
famous description in the beginning of his history of the
desolate condition of the northern counties. His picture is borne
out by Defoe, who, in his Tour through the Whole Island (1725),
remarks: 'The country south of Trent is by far the largest, as
well as the richest and most populous,' though the great cities
were rivalled by those of the north. if we consider as the
counties north of Trent Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire,
Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire,
Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire (about one-third of the total
area of England), we shall find on examination that in 1700 they
contained about one-fourth of the population,10 and in 1750 less
than one-third, while in 1881, they contained more than
two-fifths; or, taking only the six northern counties, we find
that in 1700 their population was under one-fifth of that of all
England, in 1750 it was about one-fifth, in 1881 it was all but
one-third.
    In 1700 the most thickly peopled counties (excluding the
metropolitan counties of Middlesex and Surrey) were
Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Wilts, the manufacturing districts
of the west; Worcestershire and Northamptonshire, the seats of
the Midland manufactures; and the agriculture counties of Herts
and Bucks - all of them being south of the Trent. Between 1700
and 1750 the greatest increase of population took place in the
following counties:

Lancashire increased from 166,200 to 297,400, or 78 per cent.
Warwickshire " 96,000 " 140,000, " 45 "
The West Riding " 236,700 " 361,500, " 52 "
 of Yorkshire
Durham  " 95,000 " 135,000, " 41 "
Staffordshire " 117,200 " 160,000, " 36 "
Gloucestershire  " 155,200 " 207,800, " 34 "

Cornwall, Kent, Berks, Herts, Worcestershire, Salop, Cheshire,
Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland each increased
upwards of 20 per cent.
    The change in the distribution of population between the
beginning of the eighteenth century and Adam Smith's time, and
again between his time and our own, may be further illustrated by
the following table. The twelve most densely populated counties
and their density to the square mile were:

 1700 1750 1881

Middlesex 2221 Middlesex 2283 Middlesex 10,387
Surrey 207 Surrey 276 Surrey 1,919
Gloucester 123 Warwick 159 Lancashire 1,813
Northampton 121 Gloucester 157 Durham 891
Somerset 119 Lancashire 156 Stafford 862
Worcester 119 Worcester 148 Warwick 825
Herts 115 Herts 141 West Riding 815
Wilts 113 Stafford 140 Kent 600
Bucks 110 Durham 138 Cheshire 582
Rutland 110 Somerset 137 Worcester 515
Warwick 109 West Riding 135 Nottingham 475
Oxford 107 Berks 131 Gloucester 455


    The most suggestive fact in the period between 1700 and 1750
is the great increase in the Lancashire and the West Riding, the
seats of the cotton and coarse woollen manufactures.
Staffordshire and Warwickshire, with their potteries and
hardware, had also largely grown. So had the two northern
counties of Durham and Northumberland, with their coalfields. The
West of England woollen districts of Somerset, and Wilts, on the
other hand, though they had grown also, showed nothing like so
great an increase. The population of the eastern counties
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, had increased very little; though
Norwich was still a large manufacturing town, and there were many
smaller towns engaged in the woollen trade scattered throughout
Norfolk and Suffolk. Among the few agricultural counties which
showed a decided increase during this period was Kent, the best
farmed county in England at that time.
    If we turn to the principal towns we shall find in many of
them an extraordinary growth between the end of the seventeenth
century and the time of Adam Smith. While the population of
Norwich had only increased, according to the best authority, by
about one-third, and that of Worcester by one-half, the
population of Sheffield had increased seven-fold, that of
Liverpool ten-fold, of Manchester five-fold, of Birmingham
seven-fold, of Bristol more than three-fold. The latter was still
the second city in the kingdom. Newcastle (including Gateshead
and North and South Shields) numbered 40,000 people.
    The following are the estimates of population for 1685, 1760,
and 1881 in twelve great provincial towns:-

              1685a          c. 1760                1881g

Liverpool    4,000          40,000c
                            30-35,000d            552,425
                            34,000e

Manchester  6,000           30,000c               393,676
                            40-45,000d

Birmingham  4,000           28,000b               400,757
                            30,000d

Leeds       2,000             ---                 309,126

Sheffield   4,000            30,000c              284,410
                             20,000d

Bristol    29,000           100,000d              206,503

Nottingham  8,000            17,000f              111,631

Norwich    28,000            40,000c               87,845
                             60,000d

Hull         ---             20,000c              161,519
                             24,000d

York       10,000             ---                  59,596

Exeter     10,000             ---                  47,098

Worcester   8,000          11-12,000c              40,422

    a. Macaulay's History of England c. 3.
    b. Defoe's Tour (1725)
    c. Arthur Young (1769)
    d. Macpherson's Annals of Commerce (1769)
    e. Levi's History of British Commerce
    f. Eden's State of the Poor (1797)
    g. The Returns for 1881 are those of the parliamentary
district.

    Another point to be considered is the relation of rural to
urban population. According to Gregory King, writing in 1696,
London contained 530,000 inhabitants, other cities and
market-towns, 870,000, while villages and hamlets numbered
4,100,000. Arthur Young, seventy years later, calculated that
London contained one-sixth of the whole population, and remarked
that, 'in flourishing countries,' as England, 'the half of a
nation is found in towns.' Both estimates are very unreliable,
apart from the fact that both, and especially that of Arthur
Young, overestimate the total number of the population, but the
contrast between them justly indicates the tendency of towns even
then to grow out of proportion to the rural districts. That
disproportion has, of course, become even more marked since
Arthur Young's day. In 1881 the total urban population was
17,285,026, or 66.6 per cent, while the rural was 8,683,026, or
33.3 per cent.
    The only estimates of occupations with which I am acquainted
are again those of Gregory King in 1696, and Arthur Young in
1769. They are too vague, and too inconsistent with one another,
to be relied on, but I give them for what they are worth.
According to the former, freeholders and their families numbered
940,000, farmers and their families, 750,000, labouring people
and out servants, 1,275,000, cottagers and paupers, 1,300,000;
making a total agricultural population of 4,265,000, against only
240,000 artisans and handicraftsmen. Arthur Young estimates the
number of different classes as follows:-

Farmers (whether freeholders or leaseholders),
their servants and labourers............... 2,800,000
Manufacturers of all kinds................. 3,000,000
Landlords and their dependents, fishermen
and miners................................... 800,000
Persons engaged in commerce.................. 200,000
Non-industrious poor......................... 500,000
Clergy and lawyers........................... 200,000
Civil servants, army and navy................ 500,000

 Total..................................... 8,500,000

But the number set down to manufactures here is probably as much
too high. In proportion to the total population, as the total
itself is in excess of the fact.

III England in 1760

Agriculture

    In describing the agriculture of the time the first point of
importance is the proportion of cultivated land to waste. Gregory
King, who rather overestimated the total acreage of England and
Wales, put the arable land at 11,000,000 acres, pasture and
meadow at 10,000,000, houses, gardens, orchards, etc., at
1,000,000, being a total of 22,000,000 acres of cultivated land,
or nearly three-fifths of the whole country. A land-agent in 1727
believed one-half of the country to be waste. Arthur Young,
writing fifty years later, puts the cultivated area at a much
higher figure. Estimating the total acreage of England alone at
54,000,000 acres, he considered that 52,000,000 of these were in
arable and pasture, in equal proportions.
    One or other of the two first-mentioned estimates is
certainly nearer the truth than the last. The exact proportion
is, however, impossible to determine.
    There is no respect in which the agricultural England of
today differs more from that of the period which we are
considering, than in the greatly reduced amount of common land,
The enclosure of commons had been going on for centuries before
1760, but with nothing like the rapidity with which it has been
going on since, it is known that 554,974 acres were enclosed
between 1710 and 1760, while nearly 7,000,000 were enclosed
between 1760 and 1845.4 At the beginning of the latter period a
large proportion of this land, since enclosed, was under the
primitive tillage of the common-fields. Throughout considerable
districts the agrarian system of the middle ages still existed in
full force. Some parishes had no common or waste lands belonging
to them, but where common lands were cultivated, one and the same
plan was generally pursued. The arable land of each village was
divided into three great stripes subdivided by 'baulks' three
yards wide. Every farmer would own at least one piece of land in
each field, and all were bound to follow the customary tillage.
One strip was left fallow every year; on the other two were grown
wheat and barley; sometimes oats, pease, or tares were
substituted for the latter. The meadows were also held in common.
Up to hay harvest, indeed, every man had his own plot, but, while
in the arable land the plots rarely changed hands, in the meadows
the different shares were apportioned by lot every year, After
hay-harvest the fences in the meadow land were thrown down, and
all householders had common rights of grazing on it. Similarly
the stubbles were grazed, but here the right was rarely open to
all. Every farmer had the right of pasture on the waste.
    Though these common fields contained the best soil in the
kingdom, they exhibited the most wretched cultivation. 'Never,'
says Arthur Young, 'were more miserable crops seen than all the
spring ones in the common fields; absolutely beneath contempt.
The causes of this deficient tillage were three in number: (1)
The same course of crops was necessary. No proper rotation was
feasible; the only possible alternation being to vary the
proportions of different white-straw crops. - There were no
turnips or artificial grasses, and consequently no sheep-farming
on a large scale. Such sheep as there were were miserably small;
the whole carcase weighed only 28 lbs., and the fleeces 3 1/2
lbs. each, as against 9 lbs. on sheep in enclosed fields. (2)
Much time was lost by labourers and cattle 'in travelling to many
dispersed pieces of land from one end of a parish to another.'
(3) Perpetual quarrels arose about rights of pasture in the
meadows and stubbles, and respecting boundaries; in some fields
there were no 'baulks' to divide the plots, and men would plough
by night to steal a furrow from their neighbours.
    For these reasons the connections between the practice of
enclosing and improved agriculture was very close. The early
enclosures, made under the Statutes of Merton (1235), and
Westminster (1285), were taken by the lords of the manor from the
waste. But in these uses the lord had first to prove that
sufficient pasturage had been left for the commoners; and if
rights of common existed independent of the possession of land,
no enclosure was permitted. These early enclosures went on
steadily, but the enclosures which first attract notice towards
the end of the fifteenth century were of a different kind. They
were often made on cultivated land, and, if Nasse is correct,
they took the form not only of permanent conversions from arable
into pasture, but of temporary conversions of arable into
pasture, followed by reconversion from pasture into arable. The
result was a great increase of produce. The lord having separated
his plots from those of his neighbours, and having consolidated
them, could pursue any system of tillage which seemed good to
him. The alternate and convertible husbandry, mentioned above,
was introduced; the manure of the cattle enriched the arable
land, and 'the grass crops on the land ploughed up and manured
were much stronger and of a better quality than those on the
constant pasture.' Under the old system the manure was spread on
the ground pasture, while in the enclosures it was used for the
benefit of land broken up for tillage. The great enclosures of
the sixteenth century took place in Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and
Northamptonshire, which were in consequence the most wealthy
counties. They were frequent also in Oxford, Berks, Warwickshire,
Bedfordshire, Bucks, and Leicestershire, and with similar
results. In Arthur Young's time Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent
were the best cultivated parts of England.
    Taking a general view of the state of agriculture in 1760, we
find that improvements were confined to a few parts of the
country. The first enclosure Bill (1710) was to legalise the
enclosure of a parish in Hampshire. I have looked through twelve
of these Bills of the reign of George I, and I find that they
applied to parishes in Derbyshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire,
Staffordshire, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, Wilts,
Warwickshire, and Norfolk. But though enclosures were thus widely
distributed, certain counties continued to bear a much higher
reputation than others, and in some improvements were confined to
one or two parishes, and not spread over a wide district. The
best cultivated counties were those which had long been enclosed.
Kent, which was spoken of by William Stafford in 1581 as a county
where much of the land was enclosed, is described by Arthur Young
as having 'long been reckoned the best cultivated in England.'...
'It must astonish strangers,' he says, 'to East Kent and Thanet,
to find such numbers of common farmers that have more drilled
crops than broadcast ones, and to see them so familiar with
drill-ploughs and horse-hoes. The drill culture carried on in so
complete a manner is the great peculiarity of this country....
Hops are extremely well cultivated.' Is in, another passage he
says that Kent and Hertfordshire 'have the reputation of a very
accurate cultivation.' The Marquis of Rockingham brought a
Hertfordshire farmer to teach his tenants in the West Riding to
hoe turnips. The husbandry both of that district and of the East
Riding was very backward. The courses of crops, and the general
management of the arable land were very faulty; very few of the
farmers hoed turnips, and those who did executed the work in so
slovenly a way that neither the crop nor the land was the least
the better for it; beans were never hoed at all. The husbandry of
Northumberland, on the other hand, was much superior to that of
Durham and Yorkshire. Turnips were hoed, manure was better
managed, and potatoes were cultivated on a large scale. Essex,
held up by Tusser in the reign of Elizabeth as an example of the
advantages of enclosures, and described by Young in 1807 as
having 'for ages been an enclosed country,' is mentioned as early
as 1694 as a county where 'some have their fallow after turnips,
which feed their sheep in winter,' - the first mention of turnips
as a field crop.
    But the greatest progress in the first half of the eighteenth
century seems to have taken place in Norfolk. Every one has heard
of Townshend growing turnips at Raynham, after his quarrel with
Walpole; and Young, writing in 1812, after speaking of the period
1700-1760 as one of stagnation, owing to low prices ('it is
absolutely vain to expect improvements in agriculture unless
prices are more disposed to rise than to remain long without
variations that give encouragement to the farmer'), admits that
the improvements made in Norfolk during that time were an
exception, in his Eastern Tour (1770), he had spoken of the
husbandry 'which has rendered the name of this county so famous
in the £arming world". and given seven reasons for the
improvements. These were: (1) Enclosing without assistance of
Parliament. Parliamentary enclosure 'through the knavery of
commissioners and attorneys,' was very expensive. 'Undoubtedly
many of the finest loams on the richest marls would at this day
have been sheep-walks had there been any right o£ commonage on
them.' (2) Marling, for there was plenty of marl under the sand
everywhere; (3) An excellent rotation of crops-the famous Norfolk
four years' course of turnips, barley, clover (or clover and
rye-grass), and wheat; (4) The culture of turnips well hand-hoed;
(5) The culture of clover and rye-grass; (6) The granting of long
leases; (7) The division of the county chiefly into large farms.
'Great farms,' he says, 'have been the soul of the Norfolk
culture, though in the eastern part of the county there were
little occupiers of £100 a year.
    Throughout the whole of the South of England, however, there
had been a certain amount of progress. Hoeing turnips, according
to Young, was common in many parts of the south of the kingdom,
although the extensive use of turnips - i.e. all their uses for
fattening cattle as well as feeding lean sheep - 'is known but
little of, except in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex.' Clover
husbandry, on the other hand, was 'universal from the North of
England to the further end of Glamorganshire.' Clover, the 'great
clover,' had been introduced into England by Sir Richard Weston
about 1645, as had probably been turnips also. Potatoes at the
beginning of the century were only garden crops. Hemp and flax
were frequently grown, as were also hops, which had been
introduced in the beginning of the sixteenth century.
    If we turn from the cultivation of the soil to the management
and breeding of live stock, we shall find that no great progress
had been made in this branch during the years 1700-1760. Davenant
in 1700 estimated the net carcase of black cattle at 370 lb., and
of a sheep at 28 lb. A century later Eden calculated that
'bullocks now killed in London weigh, at an average, 800 lb.,
sheep 80 lb., and lambs about 50 lb. each". and Young in 1786 put
the weight of bullocks and sheep at 840 lb. and 100 lb.
respectively. But this improvement seems to have come about after
1760. It was not until 1760-85 that Bakewell perfected the new
breed of sheep - the Leicesters - and improved the breed of
long-horned cattle, and that the brothers Culley obtained the
short-horn, or Durham cattle, from the breed in the valley of the
Tees. Some improvements in the breed of sheep, however, had
already been made. 'The wool of Warwickshire, Northamptonshire,
Lincolnshire, and Rutland, with some parts of Huntingdon,
Bedford, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk has been
accounted the longest and finest combing wool. But of late years'
(this was written in 1739) 'there have been improvements made in
the breed of sheep by changing or rams and sowing of turnips and
grass seeds, and now there is some large fine combing wool to be
found in most counties in England, which is fine, long, and soft,
fit to make all sorts of fine stuff and hose of.' Still
improvements in feeding sheep were by no means universally
adopted for half a century later. Agricultural implements, too,
were still very primitive, wooden ploughs being commonly in use,
while the small, narrow-wheeled waggon of the North held 40 or 50
bushels with difficulty.
    Arthur Young constantly attributes much of the bad
agriculture to the low rentals prevalent. 'Of so little
encouragement to them,' he writes of the farmers of Cleveland,
'is the lowness of their rents, that many large tracts of land
that yielded good crops of corn within thirty years are now
overrun with whins, brakes, and other trumpery.... If I be
demanded how such ill courses are to be stopped, I answer, Raise
their rents. First with moderation, and if that does not bring
forth industry, double them.' At the same time Young strongly
advocated long leases. But it must be remembered that besides
tenant farmers there were still a large number of freeholders and
still more copyholders either for life or by inheritance.
    On the whole, though the evidence on some points is somewhat
contradictory, the progress of agriculture between 1700 and 1760
may be said to have been slow. Writing in 1770 Arthur Young
ascribes to the last ten years 'more experiments, more
discoveries, and more general good sense displayed in the walk of
agriculture than in an hundred preceding ones.' Though
drill-husbandry was practised by Jethro Tull, 'a gentleman of
Berkshire,' as early as 1701, and his book was published in 1731,
'he seems to have had few followers in England for more than
thirty years,' and Young in 1770 speaks of 'the new husbandry' as
having sunk with Tull, and 'not again put in motion till within a
few years.' On the other hand, we have as early as 1687 Petty's
notice of 'the draining of fens, watering of dry grounds, and
improving of forests and commons.' Macpherson in the year 1729
speaks of the great sums lately expended in the enclosing and
improving of lands; and Laurence in 1727 asserts that 'it is an
undoubted truth that the Art of Husbandry is of late years
greatly improved, and accordingly many estates have already
admitted their utmost improvement, but,' he adds, 'much the
greater number still remains of such as are so far from being
brought to that perfection that they have felt few or none of the
effects of modern arts and experiments.'
    Still, in spite of the ignorance and stupidity of the farmers
and their use of wretched implements, the average produce of
wheat was large. In 1770 it was twenty-five bushels to the acre,
when in France it was only eighteen. At the beginning of the
century some of our colonies imported wheat from the mother
country. The average export of grain from 1697 to 1765 was nearly
500,000 quarters, while the imports came to a very small figure.
The exports were sent to Russia, Holland, and America.

IV England in 1760

Manufactures and Trade

    Among the manufactures of the time the woollen business was
by far the most important. 'All our measures,' wrote Bishop
Berkeley in 1737, 'should tend towards the immediate
encouragement of our woollen manufactures, which must be looked
upon as the basis of our wealth.' In 1701 our woollen exports
were worth £2,000,000, or 'above a fourth part of the whole
export trade.' In 1770 they were worth £4,000,000, or between a
third and a fourth of the whole. The territorial distribution of
the manufacture was much the same as now. This industry had
probably existed in England from an early date. It is mentioned
in a law of 1224. In 1331 John Kennedy brought the art of weaving
woollen cloth from Flanders into England, and received the
protection of the king, who at the same time invited over fullers
and dyers. There is extant a petition of the worsted weavers and
merchants of Norwich to Edward III in 1348. The coarse cloths of
Kendal and the fine cloths of Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, and
Gloucester are mentioned in the statutes of the same century. In
1391 we hear of Guildford cloths, and in 1467 of the woollen
manufacture in Devonshire-at-Lifton, Tavistock, and Rowburgh. In
1402 the manufacture was settled to a great extent in and near
London, but it gradually shifted, owing to the high price of
labour and provisions, to Surrey, Kent, Essex, Berkshire, and
Oxfordshire, and afterwards still further, into the counties of
Dorset, Wilts, Somerset, Gloucester, and Worcester, and even as
far as Yorkshire.
    There were three chief districts in which the woollen trade
was carried on about 1760. One of these owed its manufacture to
the wars in the Netherlands. In consequence of Alva's
persecutions (1567-8) many Flemings settled in Norwich (which had
been desolate since Ket's rebellion in 1549), Colchester.
Sandwich, Canterbury, Maidstone, and Southampton, The two former
towns seem to have benefited most from the skill of these
settlers so far as the woollen manufacture was concerned. It was
at this time, according to Macpherson, that Norwich 'learned the
making of those fine and slight stuffs which have ever since gone
by its name,' such as crapes, bombayines, and camblets; while the
baiye-makers settled at Colchester and its neighbourhood. The
stuffs thus introduced into England were known as the 'new
drapery', and included baiye, serges, and other slight woollen
goods as distinguished from the 'old drapery,' a term applied to
broad cloth, kersies, etc.
    The chief seats of the West of England manufacture were
Bradford in Wilts, the centre of the manufacture of super-fine
cloth; Devizes, famous for its serges; Warminster and Frome, with
their fine cloth; Trowbridge; Stroud, the centre of the
dyed-cloth manufactures; and Taunton, which in Defoe's time
possessed 1100 looms. The district reached from Cirencester in
the north to Sherborne in the south, and from Witney in the east
to Bristol in the west, being about fifty miles in length where
longest, and twenty in breadth where narrowest - 'a rich enclosed
country,' as Defoe says, 'full of rivers and towns, and
infinitely populous, insomuch that some of the market towns are
equal to cities in bigness, and superior to many of them in
numbers of people.' It was a 'prodigy of a trade,' and the 'fine
Spanish medley cloths' which this district produced were worn by
'all the persons of fashion in England.' It was no doubt the
presence of streams and the Cotswold wool which formed the
attractions of the district. A branch of the industry extended
into Devon, where the merchants of Exeter bought in a rough state
the serges made in the country round, to dye and finish them for
home consumption or export.
    The third chief seat of the manufacture was the West Riding
of Yorkshire, where the worsted trade centred round Halifax,
which, according to Camden, began to manufacture about 1537; and
where Leeds and its neighbourhood manufactured a coarse cloth of
English wool. In 1574 the manufacturers of the West Riding made
56,000 pieces of broad cloth and 72,000 of narrow. It will be
seen from this short survey that, however greatly the production
of these different districts may have changed in proportion since
1760, the several branches of the trade are even now distributed
very much as they were then, the West Riding being the
headquarters of the worsted and coarse cloth trade, while Norwich
still keeps the crape industry, and the West manufactures fine
cloth.
    The increased demand for English wool consequent upon the
extension of this industry led to large enclosures of land,
especially in Northamptonshire, Rutlandshire, Leicestershire, and
Warwickshire, which counties supplied most of the combing wools
used for worsted stuffs and stockings; but parts of Huntingdon,
Bedford, Bucks, Cambridgeshire, Romney Marsh, and Norfolk
competed with them, and by 1739 most counties produced the fine
combing wool. Defoe mentions the sale of wool from Lincolnshire,
'where the longest staple is found, the sheep of those parts
being of the largest breed". and in Arthur Young's time
Lincolnshire and Leicestershire wools were still used at Norwich.
The Cotswold and Isle of Wight sheep yielded clothing or short
wools, 'but they were inferior to the best Spanish wools,' and
could not 'enter into the composition without spoiling and
degrading in some degree the fabric of the cloth.' Consequently
in the West of England, occupied as it was with the production of
the finest cloths, Spanish wool was largely used, though shortly
before Young's time it was discovered that 'Norfolk sheep yielded
a wool about their necks equal to the best from Spain.'
    Next in importance was the iron trade, which was largely
carried on, though by this time a decaying industry, in the Weald
of Sussex, where in 1740 there were ten furnaces, producing
annually 1400 tons. The trade had reached its chief extent in the
seventeenth century, but in 1724 was still the principal
manufacturing interest of the county. The balustrades which
surround St. Paul's were cast at Lamberhurst, and their weight,
including the seven gates, is above 200 tons. They cost £11,000.
Gloucestershire, Shropshire, and Yorkshire had each six furnaces.
In the latter county, which boasted an annual produce of 1400
tons, the most famous works were at Rotherham. There were also
great ironworks at Newcastle.
    In 1755 an ironmaster named Anthony Bacon had got a lease for
ninety-nine years of a district eight miles in length, by five in
breadth, at Merthyr-Tydvil, upon which he erected iron and coal
works. In 1709 the Coalbrookdale works in Shropshire were
founded, and in 1760 Carron iron was first manufactured in
Scotland. Altogether, there were about 1737 fifty-nine furnaces
in eighteen different counties, producing 17,350 tons annually.
It has been computed that we imported 20,000 tons. In 1881 we
exported 3,820,315 tons of iron and steel, valued at £27,590,908,
and imported to the value of £3,705,332.
    The cotton trade was still so insignificant as to be
mentioned only once, and that incidentally by Adam Smith. It was
confined to Lancashire, where its headquarters were Manchester
and Bolton. In 1760 not more than 40,000 persons were engaged in
it, and the annual value of the manufactures was estimated at
£600,000. The exports, however, were steadily growing; in 1701
they amounted to £23,253, in 1751 to £45,986, in 1764 to
£200,354. Burke about this time spoke of 'that infinite variety
of admirable manufactures that grow and extend every year among
the spirited, inventive, and enterprising traders of Manchester.'
But even in 1764 our exports of cotton were still only
one-twentieth of the value of the wool exports.
    The hardware trade then as now was located chiefly in
Sheffield and Birmingham, the latter town employing over 50,000
people in that industry. The business, however, was not so much
concentrated as now, and there were small workshops scattered
about the kingdom. 'Polished steel,' for instance, was
manufactured at Woodstock, locks in South Staffordshire, pins at
Warrington, Bristol, and Gloucester, where they were 'the staple
of the city.' The hosiery trade, too, was as yet only in process
of concentration. By 1800 the manufacture of silk hosiery had
centred in Derby, that of woollen hosiery in Leicester, though
Nottingham had not yet absorbed the cotton hosiery. But at the
beginning of the century there were still many looms round
London, and in other parts of the South of England. In 1750
London had 1000 frames, Surrey 350, Nottingham 1500, Leicester
1000, Derby 200, other places in the Midlands, 7300; other
English and Scotch towns, 1850; Ireland, 800; Total, 14,000. Most
of the silk was woven in Spitalfields, but first spun in the
North at Stockport, Knutsford, Congleton, and Derby. In 1770
there was a silk-mill at Sheffield on the model of Derby, and a
manufactory of waste silk at Kendal. Coventry had already, in
Defoe's time, attracted the ribbon business. In 1721 the silk
manufacture was said to be worth £700,000 a yew more than at the
Revolution.
    Linen was an ancient manufacture in England, and had been
introduced into Dundee at the beginning of the seventeenth
century. In 1746 the British Linen Company was incorporated to
supply Africa and the American plantations with linen made at
home, and Adam Smith considered it a growing manufacture. It was,
of course, the chief manufacture of Ireland, where it had been
further developed by French Protestants, who settled there at the
end of the seventeenth century.
    The mechanical arts were still in a very backward state. In
spite of the fact that the woollen trade was the staple industry
of the country, the division of labour in it was in Adam Smith's
time 'nearly the same as it was a century before, and the
machinery employed not very different.' According to the same
author there had been only three inventions of importance since
Edward IV's reign: the exchange of the rock and spindle for the
spinning-wheel; the use of machines for facilitating the proper
arrangement of the warp and woof before being put into the loom;
and the employment of fulling mills for thickening cloth instead
of treading it in water. In this enumeration, however, he forgot
to mention the fly-shuttle, invented in 1738 by Kay, a native of
Bury, in Lancashire, the first of the great inventions which
revolutionised the woollen industry. Its utility consisted in its
enabling a weaver to do his work in half the time, and making it
possible for one man instead of two to weave the widest cloth.
    'The machines used in the cotton manufacture,' says Baines,
'were, up to the year 1760, nearly as simple as those of India;
though the loom was more strongly and perfectly constructed, and
cards for combing the cotton had been adapted from the woollen
manufacture. None but the strong cottons, such as fustians and
dimities, were as yet made in England, and for these the demand
must always have been limited.' In 1758 John Wyatt invented
spinning by rollers, but the discovery never proved profitable.
In 1760 the manufacturers of Lancashire began to use the
fly-shuttle. Calico printing was already largely developed.
    The reason why division of labour was carried out to so small
an extent, an invention so rare and so little regarded, is given
by Adam Smith himself. Division of labour, as he points out, is
limited by the extent of the market, and, owing chiefly to bad
means of communication, the market for English manufactures was
still a very narrow one. Yet England, however slow the
development o£ her manufactures, advanced nevertheless more
rapidly in this respect than other nations. One great secret of
her progress lay in the facilities for water-carriage afforded by
her rivers, for all communication by land was still in the most
neglected condition. A second cause was the absence of internal
customs barriers, such as existed in France, and in Prussia until
Stein's time. The home trade of England was absolutely free.
    Arthur Young gives abundant evidence of the execrable state
of the roads. It took a week or more for a coach to go from
London to Edinburgh. On 'that infernal' road between Preston and
Wigan the ruts were four feet deep, and he saw three carts break
down in a mile of road. At Warrington the turnpike was 'most
infamously bad,' and apparently 'made with a view to immediate
destruction.' 'Very shabby,' 'execrable,' 'vile,' 'most execrably
vile,' are Young's ordinary comments on the highways. But the
water routes for traffic largely made up for the deficiencies of
the land routes.
    Attempts to improve water communication began with deepening
the river beds. In 16S5 there was a project for rendering the
Avon navigable from its junction with the Severn at Tewkesbury
through Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, but it
was abandoned owing to the civil war. From 1660 to 1755 various
Acts were passed for deepening the beds of rivers. In 1720 there
was an Act for making the Mersey and Irwell navigable between
Liverpool and Manchester. About the same time the navigation of
the Aire and Calder was opened out. In 1755 the first canal was
made, eleven miles in length, near Liverpool. Three years later
the Duke of Bridgewater had another constructed £rom his coal
mines at Worsley to Manchester, seven miles distant. Between 1761
and 1766 a still longer one of twenty-nine miles was completed
from Manchester through Chester to the Mersey above Liverpool.
From this time onwards the canal system spread with great
rapidity.
    When we turn to investigate the industrial organisation of
the time, we &nd that the class of capitalist employers was as
yet but in its infancy. A large part of our goods were still
produced on the domestic system. Manufactures were little
concentrated in towns, and only partially separated from
agriculture. The 'manufacturer, was, literally, the man who
worked with his own hands in his own cottage. Nearly the whole
cloth trade of the West Riding, for instance, was organised on
this system at the beginning of the century.
    An important feature in the industrial organisation of the
time was the existence of a number of small master-manufacturers,
who were entirely independent, having capital and land of their
own, for they combined the culture of small freehold
pasture-farms with their handicraft. Defoe has left an
interesting picture of their life. The land near Halifax, he
says, was 'divided into small Enclosures from two Acres to six or
seven each, seldom more, every three or four Pieces of Land had
an House belonging to them;... hardly an House standing out of a
Speaking distance from another;... we could see at every House a
Tenter, and on almost every Tenter a piece of Cloth or Kersie or
Shaloon.... Every clothier keeps one horse, at least, to carry
his Manufactures to the Market; and every one, generally, keeps a
Cow or two or more for his Family. By this means the small Pieces
of enclosed Land about each house are occupied, for they scarce
sow Corn enough to feed their Poultry.... The houses are full of
lusty Fellows, some at the Dye-vat, some at the looms, others
dressing the Cloths; the women and children carding or spinning;
being all employed from the youngest to the oldest.... Not a
Beggar to be seen nor an idle person.'
    This system, however, was no longer universal in Arthur
Young's time. That writer found at Sheffield a silk-mill
employing 152 hands, including women and children; at Darlington
'one master-manufacturer employed above fifty looms'; at Boyton
there were 150 hands in one factory. So, too, in the West of
England cloth-trade the germs of the capitalist system were
visible. The rich merchant gave out work to labourers in the
surrounding villages, who were his employes, and were not
independent. In the Nottingham hosiery trade there were, in 1750,
fifty manufacturers, known as 'putters out,' who employed 1200
frames; in Leicestershire 1800 frames were so employed. In the
hand-made nail business of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the
merchant had warehouses in different parts of the district, and
give out nail-rod iron to the nail-master, sufficient for a
week's work for him and his family. In Lancashire we can trace,
step by step, the growth of the capitalist employer. At first we
see, as in Yorkshire, the weaver furnishing himself with warp and
weft, which he worked up in his own house and brought himself to
market. By degrees he found it difficult to get yarn from the
spinners; so the merchants at Manchester gave him out linen warp
and raw cotton, and the weaver became dependent on them. Finally,
the merchant would get together thirty or forty looms in a town.
This was the nearest approach to the capitalist system before the
great mechanical inventions.
    Coming to the system of exchange, we find it based on several
different principles, which existed side by side, but which were
all, as we should think, very simple and primitive. Each trade
had its centre in a provincial town. Leeds, for instance, had its
market twice a week, first on the bridge over the Aire,
afterwards in the High Street, where, at a later time, two halls
were built. Every clothier had his stall, to which he would bring
his cloth (seldom more than one piece at a time, owing to the
frequency of the markets). At six or seven o'clock a bell rang,
and the market began; the merchants and factors came in and made
their bargains with the clothiers, and in little more than an
hour the whole business was over. By nine the benches were
cleared and the hall empty. There was a similar hall at Halifax
for the worsted trade. But a large portion of the inland traffic
was carried on at fairs, which were still almost as important as
in the Middle Ages. The most famous of all was the great fair of
Sturbridge, which lasted from the middle of August to the middle
of September. Hither came representatives of all the great
trades. The merchants of Lancashire brought their goods on a
thousand pack-horses; the Eastern counties sent their worsteds,
and Birmingham its hardware. An immense quantity of wool was
sold, orders being taken by the wholesale dealers of London. In
fact, a large part of the home trade found its way to this
market. There were also the four great annual fairs, which
retained the ancient title of 'marts,' at Lynn, Boston,
Gainsborough, and Beverley.
    The link between these fairs and the chief industrial centres
was furnished by travelling merchants. Some would go from Leeds
with droves of pack-horses to all the fairs and market-towns
throughout England. In the market-towns they sold to the shops;
elsewhere they would deal directly with the consumer, like the
Manchester merchants, who sent their pack-horses the round of the
farmhouses, buying wool or other commodities in exchange for
their finished goods. Sometimes the London merchants would come
to the manufacturers, paying their guineas down at once, and
taking away the purchases themselves. So too in the Birmingham
lock trade, chapmen would go round with pack-horses to buy from
manufacturers; in the brass trade likewise the manufacturer
stayed at home, and the merchant came round with cash in his
saddle-bags, and put the brasswork which he purchased into them,
though in some cases he would order it to be sent by carrier.
    Ready cash was essential, for banking was very little
developed. The Bank of England existed, but before 1759 issued no
notes of less value than £20. By a law of 1709 no other bank of
more than six partners was allowed; and in 1750, according to
Burke, there were not more than 'twelve bankers' shops out of
London.' The Clearing-House was not established till 1775.
    Hampered as the inland trade was by imperfect communications,
extraordinary efforts were made to promote exchange. It is
striking to find waste silk from London made into silk-yarn at
Kendal and sent back again, or cattle brought from Scotland to
Norfolk to be fed. Many districts, however, still remained
completely excluded, so that foreign products never reached them
at all. Even at the beginning of this century the Yorkshire
yeoman, as described by Southey was ignorant of sugar, potatoes,
and cotton; the Cumberland dalesman, as he appears in
Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes, lived entirely on the produce of
his farm. It was this domestic system which the great socialist
writers Sismondi and Lassalle had in their minds when they
inveighed against the modern organisation of industry. Those who
lived under it, they pointed out, though poor, were on the whole
prosperous; over-production was absolutely impossible. Yet at the
time of which I am speaking, many of the evils which modern
Socialists lament were already visible, especially in those
industries which produced for the foreign market. Already there
were complaints of the competition of men who pushed themselves
into the market to take advantage of high prices; already we hear
of fluctuations of trade and irregularity of employment. The old
simple conditions of production and exchange were on the eve of
disappearance before the all-corroding force of foreign trade.
    The home trade was still indeed much greater in proportion
than now; but the exports had grown from about £7,000,000 at the
beginning of the century to £14,500,000 in 1760. During that
interval great changes had taken place in the channels of foreign
commerce. In 1700 Holland was our great market, taking more than
one-third of all our exports, but in 1760 the proportion was
reduced to about one-seventh. Portugal, which in 1703 took
one-seventh, now took only about one-twelfth. The trade with
France was quite insignificant. On the other hand, the Colonies
were now our chief markets, and a third of our exports went
there. In 1770 America took three-fourths of all the manufactures
of Manchester. In 1767 the exports to Jamaica were nearly as
great as they had been to all the English plantations together in
1704. The shipping trade had doubled, and the ships themselves
were larger. In 1732 ships 750 tons were considered remarkable;
in 1770 there were many in Liverpool of 900 tons; but in this as
in other branches of business progress was still slow, partial,
local, thus presenting a striking contrast to the rapid and
general advance of the next half-century.

V. England in 1760

The Decay of the Yeomanry

    It is a reflection that must have occurred to every one that
the popular philosophy of the day, while in the region of
speculation it has undermined ancient beliefs, has exerted in the
practical world a distinctly conservative influence. The
conception of slow development, according to definite laws,
undoubtedly tends to strengthen the position of those who offer
resistance to radical changes. It may, however, well be doubted
whether the theory of evolution is really such a support as it
seems to be to those who would uphold the existing framework of
society. It is certainly remarkable that the most recent
legislation has been at once revolutionary in its character and
justified by appeals to historical experience. I do not forget
that the most distinguished exponent of the doctrine of evolution
as applied to politics has developed a theory of government
opposed to recent legislative reforms, but that theory is an a
priori one. Those, on the other hand, who have applied the
historical method to political economy and the science of
society, have shown an unmistakable disposition to lay bare the
injustice to which the humbler classes of the community have been
exposed, and to defend methods and institutions adopted for their
protection which have never received scientific defence before.
    The fact is, that the more we examine the actual course of
affairs, the more we are amazed at the unnecessary suffering that
has been inflicted upon the people. No generalities about natural
law or inevitable development can blind us to the fact, that the
progress in which we believe has been won at the expense of much
injustice and wrong, which was not inevitable. Perhaps this is
most conspicuous in our land system, and we shall find with
regard to it, as with regard to some other matters, that the more
we accept the method of historical inquiry, the more
revolutionary shall we tend to become in practice, For while the
modern historical school of economists appear to be only
exploring the monuments of the past, they are really shaking the
foundations of many of our institutions in the present. The
historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces
the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but
it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the
gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth.
The historical method is supposed to prove that economic changes
have been the inevitable outcome of natural laws. It just as
often proves them to have been brought about by the self-seeking
action of dominant classes.
    It is a singular thing that no historian has attempted an
adequate explanation of the disappearance of the small
freeholders who, down to the close of the seventeenth century,
formed with their families one-sixth of the population of
England, and whose stubborn determination enabled Cromwell and
Fairfax to bring the Civil War to a successful close. This
neglect is the more remarkable, as economists have so
emphatically dwelt upon the extraordinary difference between the
distribution of landed property in England and in countries like
Germany and France. The modern reformer is content to explain the
facts by the existence in England of a law of primogeniture and a
system of strict settlement, but the explanation is obviously a
superficial one. To show why in England the small landed
proprietors have vanished, whilst in Germany and France they have
increased and thriven, it is necessary to carry our inquiries far
back into the history of law, politics, and commerce. The result
of a closer examination of the question is a little startling,
for we find that the present distribution of landed property in
England is in the main due to the existence of the system of
political government which has made us a free people. And on the
other hand, the distribution of landed property in France and
Germany, which writer after writer points to as the great bulwark
against revolution, is in the main due to a form of government
that destroyed political liberty and placed the people in
subjection to the throne.
    Evidence in support of this conclusion is not difficult to
adduce. The first fact which arouses our interest is that at the
conclusion of the seventeenth century it was estimated by Gregory
King that there were 180,000 freeholders in England, and that,
less than a hundred years later, the pamphleteers of the time,
and even careful writers like Arthur Young, speak of the small
freeholders as practically gone. The bare statement of this
contrast is in itself most impressive. A person ignorant of our
history during the intervening period might surmise that a great
exterminatory war had taken place, or a violent social revolution
which had caused a transfer of the property of one class to
another. But though the surmise in this particular form would be
incorrect, we are nevertheless justified in saying that a
revolution of incalculable importance had taken place, - a
revolution, though so silent, of as great importance as the
political revolution of 1831. 'The able and substantial
freeholders,' described by Whitelock, 'the freeholders and
freeholders' sons, well armed within with the satisfaction of
their own good consciences, and without by iron arms, who stood
firmly and charged desperately,' - this devoted class, who had
broken the power of the king and the squires in the Civil Wars,
were themselves, within a hundred years from that time, being
broken, dispersed, and driven off the land. Numerous and
prosperous in the fifteenth century, they had suffered something
by the enclosures of the sixteenth; but though complaints are
from time to time made in the seventeenth of the laying together
of farms, there is no evidence to show that their number
underwent any great diminution during that time. In the picture
of country life which we find in the literature of the first
years of the eighteenth century, the small freeholder is still a
prominent figure. Sir Roger de Coverley, in riding to Quarter
Sessions, points to the two yeomen who are riding in front of
him, and Defoe, in his admirable Tour through England, first
published a few years later, describes with satisfaction the
number and prosperity of the Grey-coats of Kent (as they were
called from their home-spun garments), whose political power
forced the gentlemen to treat them with circumspection and
deference. 'Of the freeholders of England,' says Chamberlayne, in
the State of Great Britain, first published towards the close of
the seventeenth century, 'there are more in number and richer
than in any country of the like extent in Europe. £40 or £50 a
year is very ordinary, £100 or £200 in some counties is not rare;
sometimes in Kent, and in the Weald of Sussex, £500 or £600 per
annum, and £3000 or £4000 stock.' The evidence is conclusive that
up to the Revolution of 1688 the freeholders were in most parts
of the country an important feature in social life.
    If, however, we ask whether they had possessed, as a class,
any political initiative, we must answer in the negative. In the
lists of the Eastern Counties' Association, formed in the Civil
War (the eastern counties were the districts, perhaps, where the
freeholders were strongest), we find no name which has not
appended to it the title of gentleman or esquire. The small
landed proprietor, though courageous and independent in personal
character, was ignorant, and incapable himself of taking the
lead. There was little to stimulate his mind in his country life;
in agriculture he pursued the same methods as his forefathers,
was full of prejudices, and difficult to move. The majority of
this class had never travelled beyond their native village or
homestead and the neighbouring market-town. In some districts
those freeholders were also artisans, especially in the eastern
counties, which were still the richest part of the country, and
the most subject to foreign influence. But, on the whole, if we
may judge from the accounts of rather later times, the yeomen,
though thriving in good seasons, often lived very hard lives, and
remained stationary in their habits and ways of thinking from
generation to generation. They were capable in the Civil War,
under good leadership, of proving themselves the most powerful
body in the kingdom; but after constitutional government had been
secured, and the great landowners were independent of their
support, they sank into political insignificance. The Revolution
of 1688, which brought to a conclusion the constitutional
struggle of the seventeenth century, was accomplished without
their aid, and paved the way for their extinction. A revolution
in agricultural life was the price paid for political liberty.
    At first, however, the absorption of the small freeholders
went on slowly. The process of disappearance has been continuous
from about 1700 to the present day, but it is not true to say, as
Karl Marx does, that the yeomanry had disappeared by the middle
of the eighteenth century. It was not till the very period which
we are considering, that is to say about 1760, that the process
of extinction became rapid. There is conclusive evidence that
many were still to be found about 1770. There were at that time
still 9000 freeholders in Kent.
    Even as late as 1807, estates in Essex, if divided, were
bought by farmers at high prices, and there was some prospect of
landed property coming back to the conditions of a century
before, 'when our inferior gentry resided upon their estates in
the country'; and about the same date there were in Oxfordshire
'many proprietors of a middling size, and many small proprietors,
particularly in the open fields.' They were especially strong in
Cumberland, the West Riding, and parts of the East Riding. In the
Vale of Pickering in 1788 nearly the whole district belonged to
them, and no great landowner had been able to get a footing. But
in 1788 this was already an exceptional case, and in other
writers of that period we find a general lament at the
disappearance of the yeoman. Arthur Young 'sincerely regrets the
loss of that set of men who are called yeomen... who really kept
up the independence of the nation,' and is 'loth to see their
lands now in the hands of monopolising lords;' and in 1787 he
admits that they had practically disappeared from most parts o£
the country. And with the yeomen went the small squires, victims
o£ the same causes.
    These causes, as I stated above, are to be sought less in
economical than in social and political facts. The chief of them
was our peculiar form of government. After the Revolution the
landed gentry were practically supreme. Not only national but
local administration was entirely in their hands, and, as a
natural consequence, land, being the foundation of social and
political influence, was eagerly sought after. We may contrast
France and Prussia, where the landowners had no political power
as such, and where, in consequence, small properties remained
unassailed. The second fact is the enormous development of the
mercantile and moneyed interest. The merchants could only obtain
political power and social position by becoming landowners. It is
true that Swift says that 'the power which used to follow land
had gone over to money,' and that the great Turkey merchants,
like Addison's Sir Andrew Freeport, occupied a good position; but
few mere merchants were in Parliament, and Dr Johnson made the
significant remark that 'an English merchant is a new species of
gentleman.' To make himself a gentleman, therefore, the merchant
who had accumulated his wealth in the cities, which, as we have
seen, were growing rapidly during the first half of the
eighteenth century with an expanding commerce, bought land as a
matter of course. Hence the mercantile origin of much of our
nobility. James Lowther, created Earl of Lonsdale in 1784, was
great-grandson of a Turkey merchant; the ancestor of the Barings
was a clothier in Devonshire; Anthony Petty, father of Sir W.
Petty, and the ancestor on the female side of the
Petty-Fitzmaurices, was a clothier at Romsey, in Hampshire; Sir
Josiah Child's son became Earl of Tilney. The landowners in the
West of England, 'who now,' in Defoe's words, 'carry their heads
so high,' made their fortunes in the clothing trade. And not only
did a new race of landowners thus spring up, but the old families
enriched themselves, and so were enabled to buy more land by
intermarriage with the commercial magnates. The Fitzmaurices, for
instance, inherited the wealth of the Pettys: Child's daughter
married the Marquis of Worcester, and, by a second marriage, Lord
Grenville of Potheridge; Lord Conway and Walpole married
daughters of John Shorter, merchant of London. 'I think I
remember,' said Sir R. Temple between 1675 and 1700, 'the first
noble families that married into the City for money.' 'Trade,'
said Defoe, 'is so far here from being inconsistent with a
gentleman, that, in short, trade in England makes gentlemen; for,
after a generation or two, the tradesmen's children, or at least
their grandchildren, come to be as good gentlemen, statesmen,
parliament-men, privy-councillors, judges, bishops, and noblemen,
as those of the highest birth, and the most ancient families.'
Contrast this fusion of classes with the French society of the
last century, with its impoverished nobility, living often on the
seignorial rights and rent-charges of their alienated estates,
but hardly ever intermarrying with the commercial classes; or
that of Prussia, where the two classes remained entirely
separate, and could not even purchase one another's land.
    I have established two facts: the special reason for desiring
land after the Revolution as a condition of political power and
social prestige, and the means of buying land on the part of the
wealthy merchants or of the nobility and greater gentry enriched
by matrimonial alliances with the great commercial class. Now
here is a piece of evidence to show that it was the accepted
policy of the large landowners to buy out the yeoman. The land
agent, whom I have so often quoted, lays down as a maxim for the
model steward that he 'should not forget to make the best inquiry
into the disposition of the freeholders, within or near any of
his lord's manors, to sell their lands, that he may use his best
endeavours to purchase them at as reasonable a price as may be
for his lord's advantage and convenience.'
    On the other hand, as a result of the supremacy of the great
landowners in Parliament, their own estates were artificially
protected. The system of strict settlements, introduced by Sir
Orlando Bridgman in 1666, though not so important as it is often
made out to be, prevented much land from coming into the market,
though it did not prevent merchants from buying when they wished.
The custom of primogeniture checked the division of estates by
leading to the disuse of inheritance by gavelkind, and similar
customs. In Cumberland primogeniture was introduced among the
freeholders in the sixteenth century. In Kent there was, in 1740,
nearly as much gavelkind as before the disgavelling Acts began,
but thirty years later it was being superseded by primogeniture.
It was during these thirty years that the process of
concentration in that county first assumed formidable
proportions. In Pickering, on the other hand, where the law of
equal division still held its own, small landowners al so, as we
have seen, survived after their extinction in most parts of
England.
    A third result of landlord supremacy was the manner in which
the common-field system was broken up. Allusion has already been
made to enclosures, and enclosures meant a break-up of the old
system of agriculture and a redistribution of the land. This is a
problem which involves delicate questions of justice. In Prussia,
the change was effected by impartial legislation; in England, the
work was done by the strong at the expense of the weak. The
change from common to individual ownership, which was
economically advantageous, was carried out in an iniquitous
manner, and thereby became socially harmful. Great injury was
thus done to the poor and ignorant freeholders who lost their
rights in the common lands. In Pickering, in one instance, the
lessee of the tithes applied for an enclosure of the waste. The
small freeholders did their best to oppose him, but, having
little money to carry on the suit, they were overruled, and the
lessee, who had bought the support of the landless 'house-owners'
of the parish, took the land from the freeholders and shared the
spoil with the cottagers. It was always easy for the steward to
harass the small owners till he forced them to sell, like
Addison's Touchy, whose income had been reduced by lawsuits from
£80 to £30, though in this case it is true he had only himself to
blame. The enclosure of waste land, too, did great damage to the
small freeholders, who, without the right of grazing, naturally
found it so much the more difficult to pay their way.
    Though the economical causes of the disappearance of the
yeomen were comparatively unimportant, they served to accelerate
the change. Small arable farms would not pay, and must, in any
case, have been thrown together. The little farmers, according to
Arthur Young, worked harder and were to all intents and purposes
as low in the comforts of life as the day-labourers. But their
wretchedness was entirely owing to their occupying arable instead
of grass lands. And apart from this, undoubtedly, the new class
of large farmers were superior, in some respects, to the too
unprogressive yeomen, - 'quite a different sort of men... In
point of knowledge and ideas,' with whose improved methods of
agriculture the yeomen found it difficult to compete. A further
economic cause which tended to depress many of the yeomen was the
gradual destruction of domestic industries, which injured them as
it injures the German peasant at the present day, in Cumberland
the yeomen began to disappear when the spinning-wheel was
silenced. The decay of the home manufacture of cloth seems to
have considerably affected the Grey-coats of Kent. And finally,
as the small towns and villages decayed, owing to the
consolidation of farms and of industry, the small freeholders
lost their market, for the badness of the roads made it difficult
for them to send their produce far. Hence the small freeholders
survived longest where they owned dairy-farms, as in Cumberland
and the West Riding, and where domestic industry flourished, and
they had a market for their products in their own neighbourhood.
    When once the ranks of the yeomanry had been appreciably
thinned, the process of extinction went on with ever-growing
rapidity. The survivors became isolated. They would have no one
of their own station to whom they could marry their daughters,
and would become more and more willing to sell their lands,
however strong the passion of possession might be in some places.
The more enterprising, too, would move off to the towns to make
their fortunes there, just as at the present day the French
peasants are attracted to the more interesting and exciting life
of the town. Thus Sir Robert Peel's grandfather was originally a
yeoman farming his own estate, but being of an inventive turn of
mind he took to cotton manufacturing and printing. This was
particularly the case with the small squires, who grew
comparatively poorer and poorer, and found it increasingly
difficult to keep pace with the rise in the standard of comfort.
Already, at the end of the seventeenth century, the complaint had
been raised that the landowners were beginning to live in the
county towns. Afterwards, the more wealthy came up to London; Sir
Roger de Coverley had a house in Soho Square. The small country
gentleman felt the contrast between him and his richer neighbours
more and more; and as he had none of the political power
attaching to land-for the great landowners had the whole
administration in their hands-there was every inducement for him
to sell and invest his money in a more profitable manner.
    To summarise the movement: it is probable that the yeomen
would in any case have partly disappeared, owing to the
inevitable working of economic causes. But these alone would not
have led to their disappearance on so large a scale. It was the
political conditions of the age, the overwhelming importance of
land, which made it impossible for the yeoman to keep his grip
upon the soil.

VI. England in 1760

The Condition of the Wage-Earners

    The condition of the agricultural labourer had very much
improved since the beginning of the century. In the seventeenth
century his average daily wage had been 10 1/4d., while the
average price of corn had been 38s. 2d. During the first sixty
years of the eighteenth century his average wages were 1s., the
price of corn 32s. Thus, while the price of corn had, thanks to a
succession of good seasons, fallen 16 per cent, wages had risen
to about an equal extent, and the labourer was thus doubly
benefited. Adam Smith attributes this advance in prosperity to
'an increase in the demand for labour, arising from the great and
almost universal prosperity of the country". but at the same time
he allows that wealth had only advanced gradually, and with no
great rapidity. The real solution is to be found in the slow rate
of increase in the numbers of the people. Wealth had indeed grown
slowly, but its growth had nevertheless been more rapid than that
of population.
    The improvement in the condition of the labourer was thus due
to an increase in real and not only in nominal wages. It is true
that certain articles, such as soap, salt, candles, leather,
fermented liquors, had, chiefly owing to the taxes laid on them,
become a good deal dearer, and were consumed in very small
quantities; but the enhanced prices of these things were more
than counterbalanced by the greater cheapness of grain, potatoes,
turnips, carrots, cabbages, apples, onions, linen and woollen
cloth, instruments made of the coarser metals, and household
furniture. Wheaten bread had largely superseded rye and barley
bread, which were 'looked upon with a sort of horror.' wheat
being as cheap as rye and barley had been in former times. Every
poor family drank tea once a day at least - a 'pernicious
commodity,' a 'vile superfluity,' in Arthur Young's eyes. Their
consumption of meat was 'pretty considerable'; that of cheese was
'immense.' In 1737 the day-labourers of England, 'by their large
wages and cheapness of all necessaries,' enjoyed better
dwellings, diet, and apparel in England, than the husbandmen or
farmers did in other countries.' The middle of the eighteenth
century was indeed about his best time, though a decline soon set
in. By 1771 his condition had already been somewhat affected by
the dear years immediately preceding, when prices had risen much
faster than wages, although the change had as yet, according to
Young, merely cut off his superfluous expenditure. By the end of
the century men had begun to look back with regret upon this
epoch in the history of the agricultural labourer as one of a
vanished prosperity. At no time since the passing of the 43d of
Elizabeth, wrote Eden in 1796, 'could the labouring classes
acquire such a portion of the necessaries and conveniences of
life by a day's work, as they could before the late unparalleled
advance in the price of the necessaries of life.'
    Nor were high wages and cheap food their only advantages.
Their cottages were often rent-free, being built upon the waste.
Each cottage had its piece of ground attached, though the piece
was often a very small one, for the Act of Elizabeth, providing
that every cottage should have four acres of land, was doubtless
unobserved, and was repealed in 1775. Their common rights,
besides providing fuel, enabled them to keep cows and pigs and
poultry on the waste, and sheep on the fallows and stubbles. But
these rights were already being steadily curtailed, and there was
'an open war against cottages.' consequent on the tendency to
consolidate holdings into large sheepfarms. It was becoming
customary, too, for unmarried labourers to be boarded in the
farmers' houses.
    On the whole, the agricultural labourer, at any rate in the
south of England, was much better off in the middle of the
eighteenth century than his descendants were in the middle of the
nineteenth. At the later date wages were actually lower in
Suffolk, Essex, and perhaps parts of Wilts, than they were at the
former; in Berks they were exactly the same; in Norfolk, Bucks,
Gloucestershire, and South Wilts, there had been a very trifling
rise; with the exception of Sussex and Oxfordshire, there was no
county south of the Trent in which they had risen more than
one-fourth. Meanwhile rent and most necessaries, except bread,
had increased enormously in cost, while most of the labourer's
old privileges were lost, so that his real wages had actually
diminished. But in the manufacturing districts of the north his
condition had improved. While nominal wages in the south had
risen on the average 14 per cent., here they had risen on the
average 66 per cent. In some districts the rise had been as great
as 200 per cent. In Arthur Young's time the agricultural wages of
Lancashire were 4s. 6d. - the lowest rate in England; in 1821
they had risen to 14s. It may be roughly said that the relative
positions of the labourer north and south of the Trent had been
exactly reversed in the course of a century.
    In Arthur Young's time the highest wages were to be found in
Lincolnshire, the East Riding, and, following close upon these,
the metropolitan and eastern counties. At first sight the high
rate of wages in the first two counties seems to contradict the
general law about their relative condition in north and south.
But on investigation we find it to be due to exceptional
circumstances. Arguing on the deductive method, we should
conjecture a large demand for or a small supply of labour; and,
in fact, we find both these influences in operation. The
population had actually diminished, in Lincolnshire from 64 to 58
to the square mile, in the East Riding, from 80 to 71; this was
partly due to the enclosures and the conversion of arable to
pasture, partly to the increase of manufactures in the West
Riding. Thus the labourers had been drawn off to the latter at
the same time that they were being driven out of the agricultural
districts. And for the remaining labourers there was a great
demand in public works, such as turnpike-roads and agricultural
improvements on a large scale.
    But there were many local variations of wages which are far
less easy to bring under the ordinary rules of Political Economy,
There was often the greatest inequality in the same county. In
Lincolnshire, for instance, wages varied from 12s. 3d. to 7s.,
and even 6s. It was at this very time that Adam Smith, arguing
deductively from his primary axiom that men follow their
pecuniary interest, enunciated the law that wages tend to an
equality in the same neighbourhood and the same occupation. Why
then these variations? Adam Smith himself partly supplies the
answer. His law pretends to exactness only 'when society is left
to the natural course of things.' Now this was impossible when
natural tendencies were diverted by legal restrictions on the
movement of labour, such as the law of settlement, which resulted
in confining every labourer to his own parish. But we must not
seek the cause of these irregularities of wages merely in legal
restrictions. Apart from disturbing influences such as this, men
do not always act in accordance with their pecuniary interest;
there are other influences at work affecting their conduct. One
of the strongest of these is attachment to locality. It was this
influence which partly frustrated the recent efforts of the
Labourers' Union to remove the surplus labour of the east and
south to the north. Again, there are apathy and ignorance,
factors of immense importance in determining the action of the
uneducated majority of men. In 1872 there were labourers in Devon
who had never heard of Lancashire, where they might have been
earning double their own wages. Human beings, as Adam Smith says,
are 'of all baggage the most difficult to be transported,' though
their comparative mobility depends upon the degree of their
education, the state of communications, and the industrial
conditions of any particular time. The English labourer to-day is
far more easy to move than he was a hundred years ago. In a
stirring new country like America there is much more mobility of
labour than in England.
    Turning from the agricultural wage-earners to those engaged
in manufactures, we find their condition at this period on the
whole much inferior to what it is now, in spite of the widening
gulf between capitalist and labourer, the status of the artisan
has distinctly improved since Adam Smith's time. His nominal
wages have doubled or trebled. A carpenter then earned 2s. 6d. a
day; he now earns 5s. 6d. A cotton weaver then earned 5s. a week,
he now earns 20s., and so on. But it is difficult to compare the
condition of the artisan as a whole at the two periods, because
so many entirely new classes of workmen have come into existence
during the past century; for instance, the engineers, whose Union
now includes 50,000 men earning from 25s. to 40s. a week. And if
wages have on the whole very greatly increased, there were, on
the other hand, some obvious advantages which the artisan
possessed in those days, but has since lost. For the
manufacturing population still lived to a very great extent in
the country. The artisan often had his small piece of land, which
supplied him with wholesome food and healthy recreation. His
wages and employment too were more regular. He was not subject to
the uncertainties and knew nothing of the fearful sufferings
which his descendants were to endure from commercial
fluctuations, especially before the introduction of free trade.
For the whole inner life of industry was, as we have seen,
entirely different from what it now is. The relation between the
workmen and their employers was much closer, so that in many
industries they were not two classes but one. As among the
agriculturists the farmer and labourer lived much the same
life-for the capitalist farmers as a class were not yet in
existence-and ate at the same board, so in manufacturing
industries the journeyman was often on his way to become a
master. The distribution of wealth was, indeed, in all respects
more equal. Landed property, though gradually being concentrated,
was still in a far larger number of hands, and even the great
landlords possessed nothing like their present riches. They had
no vast mineral wealth, or rapidly developing town property. A
great number of the trading industries, too, were still in the
hands of small capitalists. Great trades, like the iron trade,
requiring large capital, had hardly come into existence.

VII. The Mercantile System and Adam Smith

    The contrast between the industrial England of 1760 and the
industrial England of to-day is not only one of external
conditions. Side by side with the revolution which the
intervening century has effected in the methods and organisation
of production, there has taken place a change no less radical in
men's economic principles, and in the attitude of the State to
individual enterprise. England in 1760 was still to a great
extent under the medieval system of minute and manifold
industrial regulations. That system was indeed decaying, but it
had not yet been superseded by the modern principle of industrial
freedom. To understand the origin of the medieval system we must
go back to a time when the State was still conceived of as a
religious institution with ends that embraced the whole of human
life. In an age when it was deemed the duty of the State to watch
over the individual citizen in all his relations, and provide not
only for his protection from force and fraud, but for his eternal
welfare, it was but natural that it should attempt to insure a
legal rate of interest, fair wages, honest wares. Things of vital
importance to man's life were not to be left to chance or
self-interest to settle. For no philosophy had as yet identified
God and Nature: no optimistic theory of the world had reconciled
public and private interest. And at the same time, the smallness
of the world and the community, and the comparative simplicity of
the social system made the attempt to regulate the industrial
relations of men less absurd than it would appear to us in the
present day.
    This theory of the State, and the policy of regulation and
restriction which sprang from it, still largely affected English
industry at the time when Adam Smith wrote. There was, indeed,
great freedom of internal trade; there were no provincial
customs-barriers as in contemporary France and Prussia. Adam
Smith singled out this fact as one of the main causes of English
prosperity, and to Colbert and Stein, and other admirers of the
English system, such freedom appeared as an ideal to be
constantly striven after. But though internal trade was free for
the passage of commodities, yet there still existed a network of
restrictions on the mobility of labour and capital. By the law of
apprenticeship no person could follow any trade till he had
served his seven years. The operation of the law was limited, it
is true, to trades already established in the fifth year of
Elizabeth, and obtained only in market-towns and cities. But
wherever there was a municipal corporation, the restrictions
which they imposed made it generally impossible for a man to work
unless he was a freeman of the town, and this he could as a rule
become only by serving his apprenticeship. Moreover, the
corporations supervised the prices and qualities of wares. In the
halls, where the smaller manufacturers sold their goods, all
articles exposed for sale were inspected. The medieval idea still
obtained that the State should guarantee the genuineness of
wares: it was not left to the consumer to discover their quality.
And in the Middle Ages, no doubt, when men used the same things
from year to year, a proper supervision did secure good work. But
with the expansion of trade it ceased to be effective. Sir Josiah
Child already recognised that changes of fashion must prove fatal
to it, and that a nation which intended to have the trade of the
world must make articles of every quality. Yet the belief in the
necessity of regulation was slow in dying out, and fresh Acts to
secure it were passed as late as George II's reign.
    It is not clear how far the restrictions on the mobility of
capital and Labour were operative. No doubt they succeeded to a
large extent; but when Adam Smith wrote his bitter criticism of
the corporations, he was probably thinking of the particular
instance of Glasgow, where Watt was not allowed to set up trade.
There were, however, even at that time, many free towns, Like
Birmingham and Manchester, which flourished greatly from the fact
of their freedom. And even in the chartered towns, if Eden is to
be trusted, the restrictions were far less stringent than we
should gather from Adam Smith. 'I am persuaded,' he says, 'that a
shoemaker, who had not served an apprenticeship, might exercise
his industry at Bristol or Liverpool, with as little hazard of
being molested by the corporation of either place, as of being
disturbed by the borough-reve of Manchester or the head-constable
at Birmingham.' Then after quoting and criticising Adam Smith, he
adds: 'I confess, I very much doubt whether there is a single
corporation in England, the exercise of whose rights does at
present operate in this manner.... In this instance, as in many
others, the insensible progress of society has reduced chartered
rights to a state of inactivity.' We may probably conclude that
nonfreemen were often unmolested, but that, when trade was bad,
they were liable to be expelled.
    Another relic of Medievalism was the regulation of wages by
Justices of the Peace, a practice enjoined by the Act of
Elizabeth already referred to. Adam Smith speaks of it as part of
a general system of oppression of the poor by the rich. Whatever
may have been the case in some instances this was not generally
true. The country gentry were, on the whole, anxious to do
justice to the working classes. Combinations of labourers were
forbidden by law, because it was thought to be the wrong way of
obtaining the object in view, not from any desire to keep down
wages. The Justices often ordained a rise in wages, and the
workmen themselves were strongly in favour of this method of
fixing them. The employers on their part also often approved of
it. In fact we have an exactly similar system at the present day
in boards of arbitration. The Justice was an arbitrator,
appointed by law; and it is a mistaken assumption that such
authoritative regulation may not have been good in its day.
    The principle of regulation was applied much more thoroughly
to our externaL than to our internal trade. The former was
entirely carried on by great chartered companies, whether they
were on a joint-stock footing, Like the East India Company, or
were 'regulated' like the Turkey Company, in which every man
traded on his own capital. Here, again, Adam Smith carried too
far his revolt against the restrictive system, which Led him to
denounce corporate trading as vicious in principle. 'The
directors of such companies,' he says, 'being the managers rather
of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be
expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious
vigilance with which the partners in a private co-partnery
frequently watch over their own.... Negligence and profusion must
always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of
such a company.' This is an instance of pure a Priori reasoning,
but Smith's main argument is derived from the history of
Joint-Stock Companies. He sought to show that, as a matter of
fact, unless they had had a monopoly, they had failed; that is,
he proceeded inductively, and wound up with an empirical law: 'it
seems contrary to all experience that a Joint-Stock Company
should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign
trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open
and fair competition with them.' But he was too honest not to
admit exceptions to his rule, as in the instance of banking,
which he explained by the fact that it could be reduced to
routine.
    Smith's empirical law is, as we all now know, far from being
universally true, though it was a reasonable induction enough at
the time when it was made. Since then a large number of
Joint-Stock Companies have succeeded, as for instance in the iron
trade. Nor is it difficult to see the reason of this change. The
habit of combination is stronger than it was, and we have
discovered how to interest paid servants by giving them a share
in the results of the enterprises they direct. Experience has
shown also that a big company can buy the best brains. In the
recent depression of trade the ironworks of Dowlais, which are
managed on the Joint-stock system, alone remained successful amid
many surrounding failures, and that because they had the ablest
man in the district as manager.
    In Adam Smith's time, however, the existence of Joint-Stock
Companies was due not to any notion of their economical
superiority, but to the tendency to place restrictions upon
individual enterprise, based upon that belief in the antagonism
of public and private interests which was characteristic of the
time. The same idea of opposition obtained equally in
international relations. The prosperity of one country was
thought to be incompatible with that of another. If one profited
by trade, it seemed to do so at the expense of its neighbours.
This theory was the foundation of the mercantile system. It had
its origin in the spirit of Nationalism - the idea of
self-sustained and complete national life - which came in with
the Renaissance and the Reformation.
    But how came this Nationalism to he connected with a belief
in the special importance of gold and silver, which is generally
regarded as the essence of the mercantile system? The object of
that system was national greatness, but national greatness
depends on national riches generally, not on one particular kind
of riches only, such as coin. The explanation must be sought in
the fact that, owing to the simultaneous development of trade and
the money system, gold and silver became peculiarly essential to
the machinery of commerce. With the growth of standing armies,
moreover, State finance acquired a new importance, and the object
of State finance was to secure a ready supply of the precious
metals. Thus the theory sprang up that gold and silver were the
most solid and durable parts of the moveable wealth of a nation,
and that, as they had more value in use than any other
commodities, every state should do all in its power to acquire a
great store of them. At first the Government tried to attain this
object by accumulating a hoard; but this policy soon proved too
wasteful and difficult. It then turned its attention to
increasing the quantity of bullion in the hands of the people,
for it came to see that if there was plenty of bullion in the
country it could always draw upon it in case of need. The export
of gold and silver was accordingly forbidden; but if hoarding had
proved impracticable, this new method of securing the desired end
was soon found to be useless, as the prohibition could be easily
evaded. In the last resort, therefore, it was sought to insure a
continuous influx of the precious metals through the ordinary
channels of trade. If we bought less than we sold, it was argued,
the balance of trade must be paid in coin. To accomplish this end
every encouragement was given to the importation of raw materials
and the necessaries of life, but the purchase of foreign
manufactures was, for the most part, prohibited, and individuals
were entreated not to buy imported luxuries. The result was
retaliation abroad, and a deadlock in the commercial machine.
Wars of tariff were common; for instance, we prohibited the
importation of gold-lace from Flanders, and the Flemings in
return excluded our wool. The system, however, resisted the
teaching of experience, despite the fact that in abolishing the
prohibition of the export of gold and silver, the Government
acknowledged the true principle of free trade put forward by the
East Indian Company. The latter contended that the law forbidding
the export of bullion was not only useless, since it was easily
stultified by smuggling, but even, if enforced, was hurtful,
since the Orientals would only sell their valuable goods for
silver. The success of this contention marks the transition from
the Mercantile System proper to modern Protection. The advocates
of that system had shifted their ground, and instead of seeking
merely to prohibit the export of the precious metals, they
established a general protection of native industries.
    Their measures were not all alike bad. The Navigation Acts,
for instance, were defended by Adam Smith, and Mill has indorsed
his defence, on the ground that national defence is more
important than national opulence.
    The most famous of these Acts was the law of 1651, by which
no goods of the growth or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America
were to be imported into England, Ireland, or the Plantations,
except in ships belonging to English subjects, and manned by a
crew three-fourths of whom were English; while no goods of any
country in Europe were to be imported except in English ships, or
ships belonging to the country from which the goods came. The
argument used by the promoters of the law was that by excluding
the Dutch from the carrying trade to this country we should throw
it into the hands of English shipowners, and there would he an
increase of English ships. It was admitted, indeed, that this
would be giving a monopoly to English shipowners and English
sailors, and that therefore freights would be dearer, and a check
given to the growth of commerce. It was further admitted that
owing to their higher charges English ships might be driven out
of neutral ports; but the contention was, that we should secure
to ourselves the whole of the carrying trade between America and
the West Indies and England, and that this would amply compensate
for our expulsion from other branches of commerce.
    These anticipations were on the whole fulfilled. The price of
freights was raised, because English ships cost more to build and
man than Dutch ships, and thus the total amount of our trade was
diminished. We were driven out of neutral ports, and lost the
Russian and the Baltic trades, because the English shipowners, to
whom we had given a monopoly, raised their charge. But on the
other hand, we monopolised the trade to ports coming within the
scope of the Act, the main object of which was 'the preservation
of our plantation trade entire.' Our shipping received a great
stimulus, and our maritime supremacy grew with it. At the time
when the Navigation Act was passed our colonial trade was
insignificant; New York and Jersey were Dutch; Georgia, the
Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Nova Scotia were not yet planted;
Virginia, Maryland, New England were in their infancy. At the end
of the century the Barbados alone employed 400 vessels; while
with the growth of the colonies the English power at sea had
increased, until it rivalled the Dutch. In the next century the
continuous development of the American and East Indian trades
gave us a position of unquestionable maritime superiority.
    There is another argument in favour of Protection, at any
rate in its early days. Its stimulus helped to overcome the
apathy and dulness of a purely agricultural population, and draw
a part of the people into trade. But here, as everywhere,
Protection involves this great disadvantage, that, once given, it
is difficult to withdraw, and thus in the end more harm is done
than good. English industries would not have advanced so rapidly
without Protection, but the system, once established, led to
perpetual wrangling on the part of rival industries, and
sacrificed India and the colonies to our great manufacturers. And
our national dislike to Protection deepens into repugnance when
we examine the details of the system. Looking at its results
during the period from 1688 to 1776, when it was in full force,
we are forced to acknowledge that Adam Smith's invectives against
the merchants, violent as they were, were not stronger than the
facts demanded.
    But the maintenance of Protection cannot be entirely set down
to the merchants. Though the trading classes acquired much
influence at the Revolution, the landed gentry were still supreme
in Parliament; and the question arises, why they should have lent
themselves to a policy which in many cases, as in the prohibition
of the export of wool, was distinctly opposed to the interests of
agriculture. Adam Smith's explanation is very simple. The country
gentleman, who was naturally 'least subject of all people to the
wretched spirit of monopoly,' was imposed upon by the 'clamours
and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers,' and 'the sneaking
arts of underling tradesmen,' who persuaded him into a simple but
honest conviction that their interest and not his was the
interest of the public. Now this is true, but it is not the whole
truth. The landowners, no doubt, thought it their duty to protect
trade, and, not understanding its details, they implicitly
followed the teaching of the merchants. But, besides this, there
was the close connection, already referred to, between them and
the commercial classes. Their younger sons often went into trade;
they themselves, in many cases, married merchants' daughters. Nor
did they give their support gratuitously. they wanted Protection
for themselves, and if they acquiesced in the prohibition of the
wool export, they persuaded the merchants to allow them in return
a bounty of 5s. a quarter on the export of corn.
    One of the worst features of the system was the struggle of
rival interests at home. A great instance of this was the war
between the woollen and cotton trades, in which the former,
supported by the landed interest, for a long time had the upper
hand, so that an excise duty was placed on printed calicoes, and
in 1721 they were forbidden altogether. It was not till 1774 that
they were allowed again, and the excise duty was not repealed
till 1831. To take another instance: it was proposed in
Parliament in 1750 to allow the importation of pig and bar iron
from the colonies. The tanners at once petitioned against it, on
the ground that if American iron was imported, less iron would be
smelted in England, fewer trees would be cut down, and therefore
their own industry would suffer; and the owners of woodland
tracts supported the tanners, lest the value of their timber
should be affected. These are typical examples of the way in
which, under a protective system, politics are complicated and
degraded by the intermixture of commercial interests. And the
freer a government is, and the more exposed to pressure on the
part of its subjects, the worse will be the result. As an
American observer has lately said, Protection may be well enough
under a despotism, but in a republic it can never be successful.
    We find still stronger illustration of the evils of
Protection in our policy towards Ireland and the colonies. After
the Cromwellian settlement, there had been an export of Irish
cattle into England; 'but for the pacifying of our landed
gentlemen,' after the Restoration the import of Irish live stock,
meat and dairy produce was prohibited from 1660 to 1685. As
cattle-farming then became unprofitable, the Irish turned their
lands into sheepwalks, and not only exported wool, but started
woollen manufactures at home. Immediately a law was passed (1699)
confining the export of Irish wool to the English market; and
this was followed by the imposition of prohibitive duties on
their woollen manufactures. The English manufacturers argued that
as Ireland was protected by England, and its prosperity was due
to English capital, the Irish ought to reconcile themselves to
restrictions on their trade, in the interests of Englishmen.
Besides, the joint interests of both kingdoms would be best
considered if England and Ireland respectively monopolised the
woollen and linen industries, and the two nations thus became
dependent on one another. If we turn to the colonies, we find
them regarded simply as markets and farms of the mother country.
The same argument was used: that they owed everything to England,
and therefore it was no tyranny to exploit them in her interests.
They were, therefore, not allowed to export or import in any but
British vessels; they might not export such commodities as
Englishmen wanted to any part of Europe other than Great Britain;
while those of their raw materials in which our landowners feared
competition were excluded from the English markets. All imports
into the colonies from other parts of Europe, except Great
Britain, were forbidden, in order that our manufacturers might
monopolise the American market. Moreover, every attempt was made
to prevent them from starting any manufactures at home. At the
end of the seventeenth century some Americans had set on foot a
woollen industry'. In 1719 it was suppressed; all iron
manufactures-even nail-making-were forbidden; a flourishing hat
manufacture had sprung up, but at the petition of English
hatters, these competitors were not allowed to export to England,
or even from one colony to another. Adam Smith might well say,
that 'to found a great empire, for the sole purpose of raising up
a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit
only for a nation of shopkeepers.' Nothing contributed more than
this commercial system to the Declaration of independence, and it
is significant that the same year which saw its promulgation saw
also the publication of the Wealth of Nations.
    Many people on first reading the Wealth of Nations are
disappointed. They come to it expecting lucid arguments, the
clear exposition of universal laws; they find much tedious and
confused reasoning and a mass of facts of only temporary
interest. But these very defects contributed to its immediate
success. It was because Adam Smith examined in detail the actual
conditions of the age, and wrote a handbook for the statesman,
and not merely, as Turgot did, a systematised treatise for the
philosopher, that he appealed so strongly to the practical men of
his time, who, with Pitt, praised his 'extensive knowledge of
detail,' as well as 'the depth of his philosophical research.' It
was the combination of the two which gave him his power. He was
the first great writer on the subject; with him political economy
passed from the exchange and the market-place to the professor's
study; but he was only groping his way, and we cannot expect to
meet with neat arrangement and scientific precision of treatment
in his book. His language is tentative, he sometimes makes
distinctions which he forgets elsewhere, as was inevitable before
the language of economics had been fixed by endless verbal
discussions. He had none of Ricardo's power of abstract
reasoning. His gift lay in the extent and quickness of his
observation, and in his wonderful felicity of illustration. We
study him because in him, as in Plato, we come into contact with
a great original mind, which teaches us how to think and work.
    Original people always are confused because they are feeling
their way.
    If we look for the fundamental ideas of Adam Smith, those
which distinguish him most clearly from earlier writers, we are
first struck by his cosmopolitanism. He was the precursor of
Cobden in his belief that commerce is not of one nation, but that
all the nations of the world should be considered as one great
community. We may see how widely he had departed from the old
national system of economy, by contrasting the mere title of his
book, The Wealth of Nations, with that of Mun's treatise,
England's Treasure in Foreign Trade. This cosmopolitanism
necessitated a detailed refutation of the mercantile system. He
had to prove that gold and silver were not more important than
other forms of wealth; and that if we wanted to buy them, we
could always do so, if we had other consumable goods to offer in
exchange. But it might be objected: 'What if a nation refuses to
take your other goods, and wants your gold?' Adam Smith replied:
'in that case, gold will leave your country and go abroad; as a
consequence, prices will fall at home, foreigners will be
attracted by the low prices to buy in your markets, and thus the
gold will return.' I can give you an actual example from recent
history to prove the truth of his deduction. During the potato
famine of 1847, we had to import enormous quantities of grain
from America, and as a consequence had to send there £16,000,000
worth of bullion. Immediately prices rose in America and fell in
England, English merchants discontinued buying in America, while
American merchants bought largely in England, so that in the
following year all the gold came back again.
    Equally prominent in Adam Smith is his individualism, his
complete and unhesitating trust in individual self-interest. He
was the first to appeal to self-interest as a great bond of
society. As a keen observer, he could point to certain facts,
which seemed to bear out his creed. If we once grant the
principle of the division of labour, then it follows that one man
can live only by finding out what other men want; it is on this
fact, for instance, that the food supply of London depends. This
is the basis of the doctrine of laisser faire. It implies
competition, which would result, so Adam Smith believed, in men's
wants being supplied at a minimum of cost. In upholding
competition he was radically opposed to the older writers, who
thought it a hateful thing; but his conclusion was quite true.
Again it implies the best possible distribution of industry; for
under a system of free competition, every man will carry on his
trade in the locality most suitable for it.
    But the principle of laisser faire breaks down in certain
points not recognised by Adam Smith. It fails, for instance, in
assuming that it is the interest of the producer to supply the
wants of the consumer in the best possible manner, that it is the
interest of the producer to manufacture honest wares. It is quite
true that this is his interest, where the trade is an
old-established one and has a reputation to maintain, or where
the consumer is intelligent enough to discover whether a
commodity is genuine or not. But these conditions exist only to a
small extent in modern commerce. The trade of the present day is
principally carried on with borrowed capital; and it may be a
clever man's interest to sell as large a quantity of goods as
possible in a few years and then throw up his business. Thus the
interests of producer and consumer conflict, and it has been
found necessary to pass Adulteration Acts, which recognise the
non-identity of interest of seller and buyer. It was argued,
indeed, in Parliament, when these acts were proposed, that
consumers ought to take care of themselves, but the consumers are
far too ignorant to do so, especially the poor who are the great
consumers of the articles protected against adulteration. Adam
Smith, moreover, could not foresee that internal free trade might
result in natural monopolies. A conspicuous feature of our times
is the concentration of certain industries in the hands of a few
great capitalists, especially in America, where such rings
actually dictate the prices of the market. Eighty-five per cent.
of the Pennsylvania coal-mines, for instance, are in the hands of
six or seven companies who act in combination. The easiest remedy
for such monopolies would be international free trade; with
international competition few could be maintained. Finally, in
the distribution of wealth there must necessarily be a permanent
antagonism of interests. Adam Smith himself saw this, when he
said that the rate of wages depended on contracts between two
parties whose interests were not identical. This being granted,
we see that in distribution the 'harmony' of the individual and
the public good is a figment. At the present day each class of
workmen cares only for the wages of its own members. Hence the
complete breakdown of the laisser faire system in the question of
wages. We have been driven to attempt the establishment of Boards
of Conciliation all over the country, thus virtually surrendering
the principle. Nor is it true that self-interest tends to supply
all our wants; some of our best institutions, such as hospitals,
owe their existence to altruistic sentiment. These antagonisms
were to come out more strongly than ever after Adam Smith's time.
There were dark patches even in his age, but we now approach a
darker period-a period as disastrous and as terrible as any
through which a nation ever passed; disastrous and terrible,
because, side by side with a great increase of wealth was seen an
enormous increase of pauperism; and production on a vast scale,
the result of free competition, led to a rapid alienation of
classes and to the degradation of a large body of producers.

VIII. The Chief Features of the Revolution

    The essence of the industrial Revolution is the substitution
of competition for the medieval regulations which had previously
controlled the production and distribution of wealth. On this
account it. IS not only one of the most important facts of
English history, but Europe owes to it the growth of two great
systems of thought - Economic Science, and its antithesis,
Socialism. The development of Economic Science in England has
four chief landmarks, each connected with the name of one of the
four great English economists. The first is the publication of
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in 1776, in which he investigated
the causes of wealth and aimed at the substitution of industrial
freedom for a system of restriction. The production of wealth,
not the welfare of man, was what Adam Smith had primarily before
his mind's eye; in his own words, 'the great object of the
Political Economy of every country is to increase the riches and
power of that country.' His great book appeared on the eve of the
industrial Revolution. A second stage in the growth of the
science is marked by Malthus's Essay on Population, published in
1798, which may be considered the product of that revolution,
then already in full swing. Adam Smith had concentrated all his
attention on a large production; Malthus directed his inquiries,
not to the causes of wealth but to the causes of poverty, and
found them in his theory of population. A third stage is marked
by Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which
appeared in 1817, and in which Ricardo sought to ascertain the
laws of the distribution of wealth. Adam Smith had shown how
wealth could be produced under a system of industrial freedom,
Ricardo showed how wealth is distributed under such a system, a
problem which could not have occurred to any one before his time.
The fourth stage is marked by John Stuart Mill's Principles of
Political Economy, published in 1848. Mill himself asserted that
'the chief merit of his treatise' was the distinction drawn
between the laws of production and those of distribution, and the
problem he tried to solve was, how wealth ought to be
distributed. A great advance was made by Mill's attempt to show
what was and what was not inevitable under a system of free
competition. In it we see the influence which the rival system of
Socialism was already beginning to exercise upon the economists.
The whole spirit of Mill's book is quite different from that of
any economic works which had up to his time been written in
England. Though a re-statement of Ricardo's system, it contained
the admission that the distribution of wealth is the result of
'particular social arrangements,' and it recognised that
competition alone is not a satisfactory basis of society.
    Competition, heralded by Adam Smith, and taken for granted by
Ricardo and Mill, is still the dominant idea of our time; though
since the publication of the Origin of Species, we hear more of
it under the name of the 'struggle for existence.' I wish here to
notice the fallacies involved in the current arguments on this
subject. In the first place it is assumed that all competition is
a competition for existence. This is not true. There is a great
difference between a struggle for mere existence and a struggle
for a particular kind of existence. For instance, twelve men are
struggling for employment in a trade where there is only room for
eight; four are driven out of that trade, but they are not
trampled out of existence. A good deal of competition merely
decides what kind of work a man is to do; though of course when a
man can only do one kind of work, it may easily become a struggle
for bare life. It is next assumed that this struggle for
existence is a law of nature, and that therefore all human
interference with it is wrong. To that I answer that the whole
meaning of civilisation is interference with this brute struggle.
We intend to modify the violence of the fight, and to prevent the
weak being trampled under foot.
    Competition, no doubt, has its uses. Without competition no
progress would be possible, for progress comes chiefly from
without; it is external pressure which forces men to exert
themselves. Socialists, however, maintain that this advantage is
gained at the expense of an enormous waste of human life and
labour, which might be avoided by regulation. But here we must
distinguish between competition in production and competition in
distribution, a difference recognised in modern legislation,
which has widened the sphere of contract in the one direction,
while it has narrowed it in the other. For the struggle of men to
outvie one another in production is beneficial to the community;
their struggle over the division of the joint produce is not. The
stronger side will dictate its own terms; and as a matter of
fact, in the early days of competition the capitalists used all
their power to oppress the labourers, and drove down wages to
starvation point. This kind of competition has to be checked;
there is no historical instance of its having lasted long without
being modified either by combination or legislation, or both. In
England both remedies are in operation, the former through Trades
Unions, the latter through factory legislation. In the past other
remedies were applied. It is this desire to prevent the evils of
competition that affords the true explanation of the fixing of
wages by Justices of the Peace, which seemed to Ricardo a remnant
of the old system of tyranny in the interests of the strong.
Competition, we have now learnt, is neither good nor evil in
itself; it is a force which has to be studied and controlled; it
may be compared to a stream whose strength and direction have to
be observed, that embankments may be thrown up within which it
may do its work harmlessly and beneficially. But at the period we
are considering it came to be believed in as a gospel, and, the
idea of necessity being superadded, economic laws deduced from
the assumption of universal unrestricted competition were
converted into practical precepts, from which it was regarded as
little short of immoral to depart.
    Coming to the facts of the Industrial Revolution, the first
thing that strikes us is the far greater rapidity which marks the
growth of population. Before 1751 the largest decennial increase,
so far as we can calculate from our imperfect materials, was 3
per cent. For each of the next three decennial periods the
increase was 6 per cent.; then between 1781 and 1791 it was 9 per
cent.; between 1791 and 1801, 11 per cent.; between 1801 and
1811, 14 per cent.; between 1811 and 182l, 18 per cent. This is
the highest figure ever reached in England, for since 1815 a vast
emigration has been always tending to moderate it; between 1815
and 1880 over eight millions (including Irish) have left our
shores. But for this our normal rate of increase would be 16 or
18 instead of 12 per cent. In every decade.
    Next we notice the relative and positive decline in the
agricultural population. In 1811 it constituted 35 per cent. of
the whole population of Great Britain; in 1821, 33 per cent.; in
1831, 28 per cent. And at the same time its actual numbers have
decreased. In 1831 there were 1,243,057 adult males employed in
agriculture in Great Britain; in 1841 there were 1,207,989. In
1851 the whole number of persons engaged in agriculture in
England was 2,084,153; in 1861 it was 2,010,454, and in 1871 it
was 1,657,138. Contemporaneously with this change, the centre of
density of population has shifted from the Midlands to the North;
there are at the present day 458 persons to the square mile in
the counties north of the Trent, as against 312 south of the
Trent. And we have lastly to remark the change in the relative
population of England and Ireland. Of the total population of the
three kingdoms, Ireland had in 1821 32 per cent., in 1881 only
14.6 per cent.
    An agrarian revolution plays as large part in the great
industrial change of the end of the eighteenth century as does
the revolution in manufacturing industries, to which attention is
more usually directed. Our next inquiry must therefore be: What
were the agricultural changes which led to this noticeable
decrease in the rural population? The three most effective causes
were: the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation;
the enclosure, on a large scale, of common and waste lands; and
the consolidation of small 'farms into large. We have already
seen that while between 1710 and 1760 some 300,000 acres were
enclosed, between 1760 and 1843 nearly 7,000,000 underwent the
same process. Closely connected with the enclosure system was the
substitution of large for small farms. In the first half of the
century Laurence, though approving of consolidation from an
economic point of view, had thought that the odium attaching to
an evicting landlord would operate as a strong check upon it. But
these scruples had now disappeared. Eden in 1795 notices how
constantly the change was effected, often accompanied by the
conversion of arable to pasture; and relates how in a certain
Dorsetshire village he found two farms where twenty years ago
there had been thirty. The process went on uninterruptedly into
the present century. Cobbett, writing in 1826, says: 'In the
parish of Burghclere one single farmer holds, under Lord
Carnarvon, as one farm, the lands that those now living remember
to have formed fourteen farms, bringing up in a respectable way
fourteen families.' The consolidation of farms reduced the number
of farmers, while the enclosures drove the labourers off the
land, as it became impossible for them to exist without their
rights of pasturage for sheep and geese on common lands.
    Severely, however, as these changes bore upon the rural
population, they wrought, without doubt, distinct improvement
from an agricultural point of view. They meant the substitution
of scientific for unscientific culture. 'It has been found,' says
Laurence, 'by long experience, that common or open fields are
gre