The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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ECONOMIC EXPERTS 737 of the artisans is the prominent feature of the time. Nor A.D. 1776 were their leaders inclined at first to take any part in legislative movements for improving any particular social conditions; their energies were entirely absorbed in the effort to obtain a share of political power?, in the hope that they could then remedy all their wrongs. Their keenest feeling was a sense of the injustice done them, and of the hopelessness of attaining real redress until they had an effective voice in the government of the country. 265. While the working classes were waiting angrily for the power and opportunity of giving effect to their views, Parliament seemed to be singularly supine. At no previous time of widely diffused suffering throughout the country had the Legislature been content to remain so inert as it was in the period after the long wars. An impression began to be disseminated that the propertied classes were wholly in- different to the sufferings of the poor. But this was not the case ; the inaction of the House of Commons was due to the opinion, which had become more and more prevalent among educated men, that any interference on the part of the Government was injurious to the material prosperity of the i ablput community, and that no legislative remedy could be devised legislation which would really mitigate the miseries of the poor. It was not so much that Parliament failed to devise satisfactory remedies, during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, as that the Legislature regarded itself as excused from at- tempting to find either palliatives or a cure. The paralysis which affected State action during this period, was chiefly due to the influence of the economic experts of the day. Ricardo, Malthus, the elder Mill and as Bp other writers of the school of Adam Smith, were clear and fluence of vigorous thinkers, who were keenly interested in developing ceperts. the science which he had founded. They added immensely to the understanding of some aspects of social and economic progress; but as guides on practical matters they were most misleading. They were wholly unaware that the principles they enunciated were only true under certain limitations. The re- luctance of Parlia- ment Adolph Held, Zwei Biicher zur socialen geschschte Englands, p. 340. 4 ou

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