Revolution; namely, the foundation of the Bank of England (1694), the new and extended Charter granted to the East India Company in 1693, the beginning of the National Debt in the same year, and the Restoration of the Currency in 1696. The commercial and industrial section of the community was becoming more and more prominent, and the great Whig families who occupied themselves with endeavouring to rule England in the eighteenth century relied for their support upon the middle and commercial classes. The old reverence, however, for the position of a landowner had not yet died out, and the men who had gained their wealth by commerce strove for a higher social position by buying land in large quantities.2. The time had not yet come when a merchant was on equal terms with a landowner. In fact, there has always been an extraordinary sentimentalism as regards land among all classes of the English people; and for certain reasons, which, though not entirely baseless, are still somewhat inadequate, a man who has merely inherited a large amount of land (even if he has never attempted to cultivate it) is regarded as superior to one who has amassed a fortune in the industrial or commercial world. And this feeling was stronger in the eighteenth century than it is at the present time, though it is certainly even now by no means extinct. Hence commercial magnates then, as now, or even more than now, bought land, hoping to buy with it social prestige. The James Lowther who was created Earl of Lonsdale in 1784 was the descendant of a merchant engaged in the Levant trade; and the first Earl of Tilney was eminent man of business, Sir Josiah Child. the son of that The daughters of merchant princes were even allowed to marry-and maintain the scions of a needy aristocracy.5 The beginning of this new order of things can be dated with some accuracy by a remark of Sir W. Temple's: "I 1 Lecky, History, i. 187. 2 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 62. 4 Defoe, Complete Tradesman (ed. 1839, Chambers), p. 3 Ib., P. 63. 74. Thus, Child's daughter married the Marquis of Worcester; cf. Toynbee, Ind. Rev., p. 63. think I remember," he wrote in the last quarter of the seventeenth century,1 "the first noble families that married into the city for downright money, and thereby introduced by degrees this public grievance, which has since ruined so many estates by the necessity of giving good portions to daughters." Defoe actually discovered the amazing and revolutionary fact that a man engaged in commerce might be a gentleman, though, no doubt, this bold supposition of his was at first looked upon with incredulity. He says: "Trade is so far from being inconsistent with a gentleman that in England trade makes a gentleman; for, after a generation or two, the tradesman's children come to be as good gentlemen, statesmen, parliament men, judges, bishops, and noblemen, as those of the highest birth and the most ancient families."2 Dean Swift remarked, "that the power which used to follow land had gone over to money." Dr Johnson announced oracularly that "an English merchant This influx of the was a new species of gentleman." 4 merchants into the upper classes was not, however, an entirely new thing, though no doubt it became more noticeable at this time; for Harrison, the well-known describer of Elizabethan England, had long before remarked that, though "citizens and burgesses have next place to gentlemen," yet, "they often change estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion of one into the other." 5 Now, the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century went still further than the political revolution of the seventeenth to gain social and political influence for the commercial classes. It succeeded in destroying the feudal but foolish idea that the landowners alone were to be looked upon as the leaders of the nation. It gave the capitalists and manufacturers a new accession of power, by enormously increasing their wealth. Moreover, it helped to undermine the landed interest by making the manufactures of England 1 Temple's Miscellanies, quoted in Lecky, History, i. 193. 2 Defoe, Complete Tradesman, u. 8., p. 74. 3 Swift, Examiner, No. 13. Boswell, Life of Johnson (7th edn.), ii. 108. 5 Harrison, Description of England, Book III., ch. iv. (edn. 1577), page 9, Camelot Series edn, at first equal, and afterwards superior, to her agriculture, so that a rich mill-owner or iron-master became as important as a large landowner. The monopoly of the landed interest was broken by capital. Nowhere perhaps is the contrast between the old and new classes in the last century seen more closely than in Sir Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy, where the old Tory squire who held fast to Church and king is contrasted with the new commercial magnate who supported the House of Hanover.1 But already the commercial element was coming to the front in politics. In very few periods of English political history was the commercial element so strong as in the early Hanoverian days under the régime of Walpole and Pelham.2 The questions that excited most interest in Parliament were chiefly those connected with commerce and finance.3 Burke, writing in 1752, summed up the requirements of a Member of the House of Commons in a plaintive sentence, which illustrates the tendency of the time: "A man, after all, would do more by figures of arithmetic than by figures of rhetoric." A rhetorician himself, he meant, in this utterance, to be sarcastic; but it would be well if it were possible for orators to remember that two and two can only make four, and that the figures of arithmetic are safer guides for the statesman than the hyperboles of oratory. The introduction of the mercantile element into Parliament, and into the ranks of the aristocracy, though by no means an unmixed blessing, has yet had the healthy effect of keeping the English nobility in touch with the mass of the people," and of connecting all ranks together in the common interests of the national life. § 194. The Coming of the Capitalists. Now, although the commercial capitalist was fast coming into prominence as the rival of the landowner, he was 1 This illustration is due to W. Clarke, in Fabian Essays, p. 78. 3 Ib. 2 Cf. Lecky, History, i. 433. * Prior, Life of Burke, i. 38. 5 Cf. Lecky, History, i. 170 sqq., on the English aristocracy; and also Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 63. Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 6, remarks: "From the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards the monied interest has overbalanced the landed interest." This is partially true, but the capitalist hardly over becoming still more prominent as the master of the workmen whom he employed. For before the Industrial Revolution the capitalist had occupied a comparatively subordinate place.1 Of course capitalists existed, as they have always done, but their power was small as compared with that of their successors to-day. The vast enterprises of modern industry, such as railways or mills, which often require so large an expenditure of capital before they can begin to be in any way remunerative, were practically unknown a century ago. The industrial system was, moreover, far less complicated, far less international, far less subdivided. Instead of the great capitalist manufacturers of to-day, who can control the markets of a nation, England possessed numbers of smaller capitalists, with far less capital, both individually and in the aggregate, than that which is now required by a man who undertakes even a moderate business. The great capitalists of the last century were chiefly the foreign trading companies. But home manufactures, although greatly developed,5 were still largely conducted upon the domestic system, and the small capitalist-artisan was a conspicuous feature of that time, just as the large mill-owner or iron-master is of our own day. Manufactures were carried on by a number of small mastermanufacturers, who gave out work to be done in the homes of their employés; and who often combined agricultural with manufacturing pursuits." But, nevertheless, there were signs of the approach of the methods of modern capitalism, and of production upon a large scale. It was becoming inbalanced the landowner yet, though he was becoming on more equal terms with him. 1 1 Cf. Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 52. * Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 5, dates the rise of the capitalist class "from the time of Elizabeth onwards." This is rather to antedate their coming into prominence. 3 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. ch. i., remarks that it is impossible to collect all the workmen in different branches of a manufacture into the same "workhouse" (i.e., mill). In his time the huge modern factory was unknown. (Cf. Rogers' edition of Smith, Vol. I. p. 6, note.) Toynbee, Indust. Revolution, p. 53. 5 Cf. Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. ch. xi. (Vol. I. p. 260, Clarendon Press edition). 6 Toynbee, Indust. Revolution, 53. 7 Cf. Rogers, Hist. Agric., v. 810. creasingly the custom to employ a large number of work people together under one roof, or at least under the direction and supervision of one great manufacturer. Arthur Young, for instance, mentions a silk mill at Sheffield with 152 hands, a large number in the eighteenth century; a factory at Boynton with 150 hands; and a master-manufacturer at Darlington who ran above fifty looms.1 Work was also given out by capitalist manufacturers or merchants to workmen to do at home in the villages and towns. These workmen were, like the employés of the present day, entirely dependent upon their employer for work and wages. Thus at Nottingham, in 1750, we find fifty master-manufacturers who "put out" work in this way for as many as 1200 looms in the hosiery trade.2 § 195. The Class of Small Manufacturers. But although the coming of the capitalists was now near at hand, the old order of things was not seriously disturbed till the application of steam power to machinery some years later. There were still many small manufacturers who lived on their own land and worked with their workpeople in their own houses. Defoe, in his Tour through Great Britain (made in 1724-26), gives an interesting account of this class at a time when they were in the height of their prosperity, before machinery and steam had even begun to cause their disappearance. Speaking of the land near Halifax, in Yorkshire, he says: "The land was divided into small enclosures, from two acres to six or seven each, seldom more, every three or four pieces of land having a house belonging to them; hardly a house standing out of speaking distance from another. We could see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or shalloon. At every considerable house there was a manufactory. 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 3 1 Young, Northern Tour, i. 134; ii. 8, 467 (ed. 1770). 2 Toynbee, Indust. Revolution, 53; Felkin, History of Hosiery, 83. 3 Tour, iii. pp. 144-146. |