ABSTRACT
N e v e r t h e l e s s by i 780 England was a very different country in which to live from the England which had reluctantly accepted the Hano verian George as her King. Internal peace and political stability had brought an increase in wealth and prosperity. Eighteenth-century wars had been fought on European or colonial soil. They had been a burden which an expanding economy had carried without undue strain while the demands which they had created for ships, for munitions, for the equipping and provisioning of armies and of fleets, had provided additional incentives for production. Overseas conquests too had increased both monopoly markets and the control of valuable tropical products. In every sphere there had been growth and expansion. By 1 7 8 0 England was turning her back on the past and looking to the future; already in 1 7 7 6 the Declaration of Inde pendence had crashed through the traditions of the past while in the field of economic thinking the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, in the same year, attacked the mercantilist theories which up to then had governed the relationship between Britain and her overseas possessions. While George III had been struggling with problems of government and with the intractable issues of America and Ireland, men of no political importance had been laying the foundations of a new Britain which was to become ‘the workshop of the world’ . Though, in the absence of any official census, accurate figures are lacking, the population had started its steady upward climb. There were more people who could be pro ductively employed, more people to be fed than when he had come to the throne in 1 760. In industry there had been a breakthrough in
the techniques that were to make mass production possible in both textiles and heavy, industry. Improved transport was binding the country together, both socially and economically, in a way that had never been possible before. Though the hierarchical organization of society had as yet been hardly challenged it allowed sufficient flexibility and social mobility for new groupings to take place. The middling sort were finding new ways of making money, the labouring poor more varied employment. It was in 1776 that Major Cartwright, a lone voice crying in the wilderness, proclaimed the right to manhood suffrage. In other ways, too, men’s mental attitudes were changing. New theories of education were in the air, Wesleyanism was helping to promote a greater religious and moral awareness in the lower social strata, in the upper the stirring of Evangelicalism can be discerned. For many people life was more prosperous, less gross and openly materialistic than when the House of Hanover had begun its rule. Though superficially the picture may seem the same the four countries that together made up Great Britain and Ireland had altered considerably as far as their domestic economy, their social nuances, and their mental attitudes were concerned. In all these changes it was England with her greater resources that led the way.
