be a bad philosopher, but he is the best possible champion of struggling colonies, of oppressed nationalities, and of peoples whose governors deprive them of the rights of liberty and discussion. His defence of democratic institutions shows how Fox got into the heart of Liberalism. "We are compelled to own that it gives a power of which no other form of government is capable. Why? Because it incorporates every man with the State, because it arouses everything that belongs to the soul as well as to the body of man; because it makes every individual feel that he is fighting for himself, and not for another; that it is his own cause, his own safety, his own concern, his own dignity on the face of the earth, and his own interest on the identical soil which he has to maintain."[[81]] It was this capacity for seeking human beings rather than forms which made Fox such a champion of liberty during the great war with France. He never thought out his principles, and his instinct for their application was not always unerring. There are some early instances of factious opposition, which do him no credit. But he stood the great test of the French Revolution, and if others provide posterity with more of the philosophy of Liberalism than he, no other ever preached it more honestly or more courageously in his day.

With these exceptions the Whig party of the end of the eighteenth century contained few believers in Liberalism. The parties were indeed less sharply divided at the accession of George III than they are at the present time. Groups of statesmen, like the Rockingham Whigs, were united on general principles of government. Districts, like the City of London and Westminster, showed a general inclination towards democratic institutions. But party ties were largely personal, and George III deliberately set himself to break down divisions of opinion by bribery and intimidation, and to consolidate a majority of the Commons in a union which had nothing in common but its subserviency to the Crown. The labels of Whig and Tory could not then be applied so surely as those of Liberal and

Conservative to-day. Liberal opinions are therefore to be found only in a state of partial distribution. The Rockingham Whigs were Liberal in maintaining the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown, in claiming the rights of free election and free discussion for the electors, in advocating the abolition of religious disabilities, and especially in defending the American colonists against arbitrary government from England. But even they had no belief in a wide franchise, and some of them, who lived into the French Revolution, even became violently reactionary. Liberalism was thus a matter of patchwork at the best, and it would be difficult to find any considerable party of men who were united in a substantially Liberal political creed until 1868, when Gladstone's first Government came into power. The general tone of government up to the outbreak of the Revolution was Tory, tempered in some quarters by Liberal views of special subjects. After the Revolution, though the general aspect was more definitely Tory, a real Liberal appearance was assumed by a small section of the Whig party, and the growth of modern Liberalism actually began.

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST MOVEMENT TOWARDS LIBERALISM

Three great events, or series of events, combined to produce the process of individual emancipation, which is the subject of this book. The first was the economic transformation, called the Industrial Revolution, which began about 1760 and ended about 1830. The second was the American Rebellion, which ended in the recognition of the independence of the United States in 1783. The third was the French Revolution, in part at least a consequence of the American Rebellion, which ended in the establishment of a Republic in 1793.[[82]] The first operated to change the conditions of life of the English people. The second and third operated to communicate to them ideas for which their new conditions of life had made them ready. Revolutions are never the product of circumstances alone, or of speculation alone. They are begotten by speculation acting upon circumstances. New ideas falling upon a people who have no reason to seek change bring forth little fruit. New ideas falling upon a people who have cause for discontent may bring forth fruit a hundredfold. England, at the end of the eighteenth century, was a society in a state of rapid economic

change, which produced a disposition in the mass of the community to alter institutions adapted for more stable conditions. From America and from France came the preaching of the right of the individual to control his own life, which precisely suited the case of those whom swift alterations of the economic structure exposed to injury.

For the purposes of this work it is not necessary to examine the industrial changes in detail. They had four leading features: the discovery of new processes of manufacture, the invention of machinery, the application of power, and the improvement of communications. The application of coal, instead of wood, to the smelting of iron, and the introduction of powerful machinery in the cotton and woollen industries, enormously increased the production of goods, and with that the demand for workpeople and the size of towns. In 1761 Brindley and the Duke of Bridgewater began constructing canals, which enabled goods to be carried about the country in greater bulk and with more speed than was ever possible with packhorses and carts. James Watt obtained his first patent for the steam-engine in 1769, and by the end of the century it was established in almost every industry of importance. All these changes combined to increase to an enormous extent the quantity of manufactured articles. But they did much more. They altered the distribution of population, and they altered the whole system upon which industry was based. Two things were of vital importance for the working of the new inventions. The iron industry had formerly been situated in the South of England, where the forests of Sussex provided ample fuel. The coal-beds lay in South Wales and the North of England, and the iron mines lay conveniently beside them. The iron industry accordingly disappeared entirely from Sussex, and was re-established in the other districts. The coal and iron industries determined the situation of the industries which required steam power and machinery. The cotton industry found another of its necessities in the climate of Lancashire. The woollen industry was transferred from Norfolk, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and