Abstract
The economic and social condition of England on the eve of the industrial revolution, with special reference to Lancashire
It is the purpose of this thesis to discuss
some phases of this period of preparation, and to show
how, in the spheres of agriculture and of industry, the
highway had been made straight for the entry of the new
methods and organisation that were to create and dominate
the new age. An endeavour will he made to show how
far the abandonment of the old economic organisation
had proceeded, and to what extent the lines of the new
had begun to emerge. While special attention is paid
throughout to Lancashire, it has not been the intention
to confine the scope of discussion to that county* but
rather to use it to illustrate the broader sweep of the
principles involved. Any description of England is
liable to be partial , and thus make generalisations
difficult. Industry was expanding in the north, while in
the south and west,, it tended to decline. The worsted
industry of Norfolk and Essex had already begun to move
northward into Yorkshire. The cotton industry bin Lancashire
was already beginning to cause uneasiness amongst the
woollen manufacturers and merchants, lest the new fabrics
should spoil their trade. With industry, population was
moving northward. While the date 1760 is adopted as roughly
marking the limit of the present enquiry, it stands rather
as a landmark than as a goal post. In the woollen industry
particularly, it is possible to take facts from a later
period without invalidating the main contention of the thesis.
There will he an attempt to show how the new
movements, which were to dominate the modern, economic world
were already groping through to the light. During the first
half of the eighteenth century. the systems and organisation
of a former age were passing away, and when the new order gained, entrance, it found the "room more or less swept
and garnished. There were still many survivals of the
former system, but the great landmarks, which had so
strongly characterized the Tudor and Stuart regimes were
gone, and their places were waiting to be filled by the
ideas and institutions of a new world,
