t, and Cartwright
revolutionised the cotton trade in the last twenty years of the eighteenth
century, and increased enormously the production of woollen goods. England
ceased to be mainly a nation of farmers and merchants; domestic manufacture
gave way to the factory system; the labouring people, unable to make a
living in the country, gathered into the towns. The long series of
Enclosure Acts--1760-1843--turned seven million acres of common land into
private property, and with this change in agrarian conditions and the
growth of population England ceased to be a corn-exporting country, and
became dependent on foreign nations for its food supply.

While these industrial and agrarian changes meant a striking increase in
wealth and population, they were accompanied by untold misery to the common
people.

"Instead of the small master working in his own home with his one or two
apprentices and journeymen, the rich capitalist-employer with his army of
factory hands grew up. Many of these masters were rough, illiterate and
hard, though shrewd and far-seeing in business. The workmen were forced to
work for long hours in dark, dirty and unwholesome workshops. The State did
nothing to protect them; the masters only thought of their profits; the
national conscience was dead, and unjust laws prevented them combining
together in trade unions to help themselves. Women and children were made
to work as long and as hard as the men. A regular system grew up of
transporting pauper and destitute children to weary factory work. There was
no care for their health. There were few churches and chapels, though the
Methodists often did something to prevent the people from falling back into
heathendom. The workmen were ignorant, brutal, poor and oppressed. There
were no schools and plenty of public houses. In hard times distress was
widespread, and the workmen naturally listened to agitators and fanatics,
or took to violent means of avenging their wrongs, for they had no
constitutional means of redress. Even the masters had no votes, as the new
towns sent no members to Parliament. The transfer of the balance of
population and wealth from the south and east to the north and Midlands
made Parliamentary reform necessary."[76]

With this transfer of the balance of economic power came a good deal of
rivalry between the manufacturers and the landed gentry, the latter
becoming more and more Tory, the former more and more Radical. As all
political po