of course, this contrast existed between the rich landowner, who received rents, and the poor agricultural labourer, whose labour helped to pay them. But, speaking of industry generally, it may be said that the absence of machinery kept employers and workmen more upon a common level; and as large factories, of course, did not exist, industry was carried on chiefly in the workmen's homes, while the workman was not merely a unit among hundreds of unknown "hands" in a mill, but a person not hopelessly removed in social rank from his employer, who was well acquainted with him, and, like him, worked with his own hands. But now this old order of things passes away, and a new order appears, ushered in by the whirr and rattle of machinery and the mighty hiss of steam. A complete transformation takes place, and the life of England stirs anew in the great Industrial Revolution. CHAPTER XX THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION §193. Industry and Politics. Merchant Princes. Landowners and WE are, of course, mainly concerned in this book with industrial facts; but as these underlie all politics and national history, we must pause for a moment to see how the growth of commerce had by this time affected the relations of two great classes: the landowners and their new rivals, the great merchants and the commercial classes generally. Up to the time of the deposition of James II., or the Whig Revolution of 1688, as it is sometimes called,1 the land-owning class had been practically supreme in social and political influence. But from that time forward, al-, /?f though they still held this high position, their influence was heavily counterbalanced by that of the mercantile classes.2 The Revolution may have been aristocratic in its origin,3 but it was certainly democratic in its ultimate results. The capitalists and the commercial magnates were all favoured by the great movement which divided the nation into the two historic parties of Whigs and Tories, for it was that movement which first accentuated their importance in the political life of the nation. That importance was still further increased by a series of significant economic events,5 already alluded to, which took place shortly after the 1 Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century, i. 171, remarks that the House of Lords was chiefly Whig, and that the aristocracy really effected this Revolution. 2 For the mercantile element in politics, cf. Lecky, History, i. 199, 200. 'Lecky (History, i. 16, 156) shows that it was an aristocratic movement, but does not indicate quite so clearly its results in bringing into prominence the middle (and, later, even the lower) classes. "The political influence of the industrial and moneyed classes was greatly increased by the Revolution." Lecky, History, i. 201. Above, pp. 299-304. |