ns. Population multiplied enormously, and nearly all
the increase took place in the proletariat. Further, Ireland had entered
upon an orderly development only since the beginning of the eighteenth
century. There, too, the population, more than decimated by English
cruelty in earlier disturbances, now rapidly multiplied, especially after
the advance in manufacture began to draw masses of Irishmen towards
England. Thus arose the great manufacturing and commercial cities of the
British Empire, in which at least three-fourths of the population belong
to the working-class, while the lower middle-class consists only of small
shopkeepers, and very very few handicraftsmen. For, though the rising
manufacture first attained importance by transforming tools into
machines, workrooms into factories, and consequently, the toiling lower
middle-class into the toiling proletariat, and the former large merchants
into manufacturers, though the lower middle-class was thus early crushed
out, and the population reduced to the two opposing elements, workers and
capitalists, this happened outside of the domain of manufacture proper,
in the province of handicraft and retail trade as well. In the place of
the former masters and apprentices, came great capitalists and working-
men who had no prospect of rising above their class. Hand-work was
carried on after the fashion of factory work, the division of labour was
strictly applied, and small employers who could not compete with great
establishments were forced down into the proletariat. At the same time
the destruction of the former organisation of hand-work, and the
disappearance of the lower middle-class deprived the working-man of all
possibility of rising into the middle-class himself. Hitherto he had
always had the prospect of establishing himself somewhere as master
artificer, perhaps employing journeymen and apprentices; but now, when
master artificers were crowded out by manufacturers, when large capital
had become necessary for carrying on work independently, the
working-class became, for the first time, an integral, permanent class of
the population, whereas it had formerly often been merely a transition
leading to the bourgeoisie. Now, he who was born to toil had no other
prospect than that of remaining a toiler all his life. Now, for the
first time, therefore, the proletariat was in a position to undertake an
independent movement.

In this way were brought together those vas