t time in the light
of an industrial organism, we must consider it as one in which the
processes of integration and of differentiation of parts has advanced
but a little way, consisting as yet of a number of homogeneous and
incoherent national cells.

This homogeneity is of course qualified by differences in production
and consumption due to climate, natural products, national character
and institutions, and the development of industrial arts in the
several nations.

Sec. 5. This consideration of the approximate homogeneity of the national
units of world-industry gives a higher scientific value to the
analysis of a single typical industrial nation such as England, than
would be the case in modern times, when the work of differentiation of
industrial functions among the several nations has advanced much
further.

Taking, therefore, the national industry of England as the special
subject of analysis, we may seek to obtain a clear conception of the
size, structure, and connections, of the several branches of industry,
paying special regard to the manufactures upon which the new
industrial forces were chiefly to operate.

It is not possible to form a very accurate estimate of the relative
importance of the different industries as measured either by the money
value of their products, or by the amount of labour engaged in
producing them. Eighteenth century statistics, as we saw, furnished no
close estimate of the total income of the nation or of the value of
home industries. Since no direct census of the English population was
taken before 1805, the numbers were never exactly known, and
eighteenth century economists spent much time and ingenuity in trying
to ascertain the growth of population by calculations based upon the
number of occupied houses, or by generalising from slender and
unreliable local statistics, without in the end arriving at any close
agreement. Still less reliable will be the estimates of the relative
size and importance of the different industries.

Two such attempts, however, one slightly prior to the special period
we are investigating, and one a little later, may be taken as general
indications of the comparative importance of the great divisions of
industry, agriculture, manufacture, distribution or commerce.

The first is that of Gregory King in the year 1688. King's
calculation, however, can only be regarded as roughly approximate. The
quantity of combined agriculture and manufacture, and th