yet he
looks back to the period which succeeded the Reformation as
representing the ideal state of the British polity. His sympathy with
the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries predisposed
him to this position. He would have been more intelligible if he had
been more distinctly reactionary. For all that, his views show the
presence of a leaven which was materially to affect the later
development of English opinions. That Jacobinism meant anarchy, and
that anarchy led irresistibly to military despotism were propositions
which to him, as to so many others, seemed to be established by the
French revolution. What, then, was the cause of the anarchy? Sir
Thomas More comes from the grave to tell us this, because he had
witnessed the past symptoms of the process. The transition from the
old feudal system to the modern industrial organisation had in his day
become unmistakably developed. In feudal times, every man had his
definite place in society; he was a member of a little group;
supported, if controlled and disciplined, by an elaborate system of
spiritual authority. The Reformation was the period at which the
'masterless man' made his appearance. The conversion of pastures into
arable land, the growth of commerce and of pauperism, were marks of
the coming change. It proceeded quietly for some generations; but the
development of the modern manufacturing system represents the
operation of the same process on a far larger scale, and with far
greater intensity. The result may be described by saying that we have
instead of a legitimate development a degeneration of society. A vast
populace has grown up outside of the old order. It is independent
indeed, but at the heavy price of being rather an inorganic mass than
a constituent part of the body politic. It is, briefly, to the growth
of a huge 'proletariate' outside the church, and hostile to the state,
that Southey attributes all social evils.

The view has become familiar enough in various shapes; and in the
reproaches which Southey brings against the manufacturing system we
have an anticipation of other familiar lamentations. Our manufacturing
wealth is a 'wen,' a 'fungous excrescence from the body politic';[153]
it is no more a proof of real prosperity than the size of a dropsical
patient is a proof of health;[154] the manufacturer worships mammon
instead of Moloch;[155] and wrings his fortune from the degradation of
his labourers as his warlike ancestors