, which replaced the weaver by
machinery. Ingenious however as these inventions were, they would have
remained comparatively useless had it not been for the revelation of a
new and inexhaustible labour-force in the steam-engine. It was the
combination of such a force with such means of applying it that enabled
Britain during the terrible years of her struggle with France and
Napoleon to all but monopolise the woollen and cotton trades, and raised
her into the greatest manufacturing country that the world had seen.

How mighty a force this industrial revolution was to exert on English
politics and English society time was to show. By the transfer of wealth
and population from southern to northern England, and from the country
to the town, it was in the next fifty years to set on foot a revolution
in both, the results of which have still to be disclosed. Of such a
revolution no English statesman as yet had a glimpse; but already the
growth of industrial energy and industrial wealth was telling on the
conditions of English statesmanship. The manufacturer and the merchant
were coming fast to the front; and their temper was more menacing to the
monopoly of political power by the Whigs and the landed aristocracy whom
the Whigs represented than the temper of the king himself. Already
public opinion was finding in them a new concentration and weight; and
it was certain that as the representatives of public opinion they would
at last demand a share in the work of government. Such a demand might
have been delayed for a while had they been content with the way in
which England was governed. But they were far from being content with
it. To no class indeed could the selfishness, the corruption, the
factiousness, and the administrative inefficiency of the ruling order be
more utterly odious. Their tone was moral, and they were influenced more
and more by the religious and philanthropic movement about them. As men
of business, they revolted against the waste and mismanagement which
seemed to have become normal in every department of government. Their
patriotism, their pride in England's greatness, alienated them from men
who looked upon political eminence as a means of personal gain. Above
all their personal energy, their consciousness of wealth and power, and
to some extent the natural jealousy of the trader against the country
gentleman, urged them to press for an overthrow of the existing
monopoly, and for a fairer distribution of p