The History of England A Study in Political Evolution

land from an agricultural into an industrial community. The period during which these changes took place cannot from the nature of things be

l stage a pastoral stage; but that lies beyond the scope of English history, because both the English people and the Celts they conquered had passed out of the pastoral stage before recorded English history begins. Each of these stages corresponds to a different social organization: the pastoral stage was patriarchal, the agricultural stage was feudal, t

. A lonely shepherd can live on his flocks without help; a single family can provide for its own agricultural subsistence, and the normal holding of the primitive English family, the "hide" as it was called, was really a share in all the means of livelihood, corn-land, pasture-land, rights of common and of cutting wood. This family independence long survived, and home-brewing, home-baking, home- washing, are not even now extinct. Each family in the primitive village did everything for itself. When its needs and standard of comfort grew, increased facilities beyond the reach of the individual household were provided by the lord of the manor, as, for instance, a mill, a bakehouse, a wine-

other commodities to be produced by other communities. For the exchange of these commodities markets and fairs were established at various convenient centres; and this in turn led to the specialization of traders and merchants, who did not make, but only arranged for the barter of, manufactures. Through the development of local industries and markets, villages grew into towns, and towns expanded with the extent of the area they supplied. A town whic

need of a Poor Law. But with the expansion of the sphere of men's operations, the differences between the poor and the rich began to increase. There is little to choose between a slow runner and a swift when the race covers only ten yards; there is more when it covers a hundred, and a great deal when it covers a mile. So, too, when operations are limited to the village market, ability has a limited scope, and the able financier does not grow so very much richer than his neighbour. But when his market

or less; some produce the corn-supply of the world, some its coal, some its oil, and some do its carrying trade. It is now a question whether there should not be some limits to this process, and it is asked whether a nation or empire should not be self-supporting, irrespective of the e

of acts against fraudulent manufacturers and against inclosures were passed in vain, because they ran counter to economic conditions. The products of the new factories, like Jack of Newbury's kerseys, could not equal in quality the older home-made article, because the home-made article was produced under non-economic conditions. Spinsters today knit better garments than those turned out in bulk, because neither time nor money is any consideration with them; they knit for occupation, not for a living, and they can afford to devote more labour to their produce than they could possibly do if they depended upon it for subsistence. The case was the same with

e now worth millions were appropriated by landlords in defiance of the law. This illegality was remedied in 1549, not by stopping the inclosures but by making them legal, provided that "sufficient" commons were left; if the incloser considered his leavings enough, the gainsaying of the tenants was to be ignored, or punished as treason or felony in case of persistence. England, however, was still fairly big for its three or four millions of souls, and an Act of Queen Elizabeth provided that every new cottage built

lding was the most famous English industry; and when Peter the Great visited England, he spent most of his time in the Deptford yards. For some of these imports England paid by her services as carrier; and so far as India was concerned it was a case of robbery rather than exchange. But exports were more and more required to pay for the ever-increasing imports. It is impossible to state categorically either that the imports provoked the exports or the exports the imports; for the supply creates the demand as much

ese woollens had long been manufactured on the domestic system in the sheep-rearing districts of England, particularly Yorkshire; many a cottage with its four acres for farming had also its spinning-wheel, and many a village its loom; and the cloth when finished was conveyed by pack-horses or waggons to the markets and fairs to be sold for export or home consum

ew up around these new and artificial manufacturing centres. Their locality was, however, determined by natural causes; at first water-power was the best available force to drive the new machines, and consequently towns sprang up along the banks of rivers. But Watt's application of steam- power to machinery soon supplanted water; and for steam-power coal and iron were the greatest necessities. Factories therefore tended to congregate where co

further specialization consequent upon the industrial revolution; while the agricultural labourer gave up spinning under the stress of factory competition, the spinner deserted his cottage and four acres in the country, to seek a dwelling near the factory which employed him; and the Elizabethan Act, insisting upon the allocation of four acres to each new cottage built, was repealed. But for that repeal,

h and east had been the manufacturing centres because iron was smelted with wood and not with coal. Now that coal was substituted for wood, the juxtaposition of coal and iron mines in the north attracted thither the industries of the nation, while the special features of its climate made South Lancashire the home of cotton

f the peace in supplementing the beggarly wages of the labourers by grants out of the rates proportioned to the number of each man's children produced a similar effect. The result was an increase in the population welcome to patriots who hoped for hordes of soldiers and sailors to fight Napoleon, but startling to economists like Malthus, who inferred therefrom a natural law c

e war, upon the safety-valve of constitutional reform. Then in 1832, after one general election fought on this issue, and after further resistance by the House of Lords on behalf of the liberties of borough-proprietors and faggot-voters, the threat to create peers induced a number to abstain sufficient to ensure the passing of the first Reform Bill. It was a moderate measure to have brought the country to the verge of political revolution; roughly, it disfranchised a number of poor voters, but enfranchised the mass of the middle and lower middle-class.

lth her own prosperity depended. In particular, England became dependent upon foreign producers for her food supplies. During the war the foreign supply of corn was so hampered that it was as dear to import as to grow at home; but after the peace the price began to fall, and the farmers and landlords, whose rents depended ultimately upon the price of corn, demanded protection corres

6 providing for the gradual abolition of the corn-duties, saving only a registration duty of one shilling, which was removed some twenty years later. This repeal of the Corn Laws did not appreciably affect the price of corn, the great reduction of which was subsequently effected by the vast expansion of corn-growing areas in the colonies and abroad. But it enormously increased the supply at once, and gradually gave England the full bene

collect and easy to evade; and the industry they stimulated most was smuggling. The younger Pitt, influenced by Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776, reduced and simplified these duties; but 443 Acts still survived when in 1825 Huskisson and other enlightened statesmen secured their consolidation and reduction to eleven. This Tariff Reform, as its supporters called it, was a step towards Free Trade. Peel gradually

otection of manufactured goods did not long survive the successful attack which manufacturers had levelled against the protected produce of the landlords and the farmers. The repeal of the Navigation Acts rounded off the system; British shipping, indeed, needed no protection, but the admission of colonial goods free of duty and the removal of the embargo on their trade with foreign countries may not have compensate

es it more and more difficult for the worker to turn to other labour, if his employment fails. The specialist's lack of all-round capacity is natural and notorious. Hence most serious results follow the slightest dislocation of national economy. This specialization has also important psychological effects. A farmer, with his varied outdoor occupations, feels little craving for relief and relaxation. The factory hand, with hi

ment proved any prophylactic against the immorality of commercial and industrial creeds. While those two religious movements were at their height, new centres of industrial population were allowed to grow up without the least regard for health or decency. Under the influence of laissez-faire philosophy, each wretched slum-dweller was supposed to be capable, after his ten or twelve hours in the factory, of looking after his own and his chi