ABSTRACT
The Sutherland fortune was an unrivalled concentration of aristocratic wealth in the ‘Age of Improvement’. It had been caught up in that unpredicted expansion of the national economy that we now know as the Industrial Revolution. This great and complex process, at once dramatic, cumulative and virtually unprecedented, generated new tensions and pressures in every corner of British life. Rapid economic growth is always a disturbing and often a dislocating experience. Any society undergoing it is committed to continuous change and adjustment. In Britain there was no example to follow, no planners to guide the process, and no specific machinery of government to influence the course of the change. Yet somehow the revolution of the economy was contained, the social framework did not break asunder. Somehow the dislocation of traditional social relationships was minimized.
