THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND 611 
novelties, and inventors could reasonably hope to reap ad- 49, 1m 
vantage themselves from the improvements they suggested. ’ 
In the seventeenth century such an expansion had hardly 
been possible at all; the dominant principles were still in 
favour of a well-ordered trade, to be maintained by securing The well- 
special concessions ; the interlopers, who were prepared to con- big the 
test such privileges and to force their business on any terms Seni 
they could, were still regarded as injurious to the sound and 
healthy development of commerce. But after the Revolution 
England entered on a new phase of mercantile life; and the 
keen competition, which had been allowed free play temporarily 
during the Interregnum, with disastrous results, came to be 
accepted as the ordinary atmosphere of trade. The principles, 
which the interlopers had practised, were being more generally 
adopted, and all merchants became agreed that it was by 
pushing their wares, and selling goods that were better and 
cheaper than those of other countries, that new markets 
could be opened up and old ones retained. The “ well-ordered 
trade ” of the Merchant Companies would hardly have afforded 
sufficient scope for the introduction of mechanical improve- 
ments in manufacturing. In the civic commerce of the 
Middle Ages, and during the seventeenth century, merchants 
had looked to well-defined and restricted markets, in which 
they held exclusive rights. So long as this was the case 
attempts were made to carry on industrial production so as 
just to meet these limited requirements, and to secure 
favourable conditions for the artisan, by guarding him from 
competition and authoritatively assessing his wages. As 
merchants and manufacturers realised that they could best 
gain, and keep, foreign markets, not by special privileges, 
but by supplying the required goods at low rates, they aimed 
at introducing the conditions of manufacture under which in- 
dustrial expansion is possible. This opinion commended itself and the old 
more and more to men of business and legislators, but it tee 
penetrated slowly among the artisans, who preferred the ee 
stability of the life they enjoyed under a system of regulation 
and restriction. Workmen were inclined to oppose the intro- 
duction of machinery in so far as it tended to upset the old- 
established order of the realm®, while others seem to have hoped 
1 See below, pp. 638, 652. 
29