ABSTRACT
Social scientists generally associate education with social change. Sociologists, for example, link it with social mobility, political theorists with democracy, and economists with economic growth. If the law and legal institutions of England differed considerably from those of the principal European countries, so also did the government and the political institutions which shaped the framework of law. In the long run other countries with different legal systems were able to industrialize, and even before England's remarkable growth Holland had established a successful mercantile economy on the basis of Roman Law. If one views the industrial revolution as the outcome, institutionally, of an increasingly efficient market then factors making for the efficiency of the market were of paramount importance for the industrial revolution. The two topics which dominate the statute law of the eighteenth century are public law, and commerce and industry.
