VII. LAISSEZ FAIRE. 
AD. 1776 
~—1850. 
I. Tae WORKSHOP OF THE WORLD. 
242. THE period, which opened with Arkwright's me- The 
chanical inventions, has been the commencement of a new unnie 
era in the Economic History, not only of England, but of pac in 
the whole world. It marked one of the great stages in England 
the growth of human power to master nature. The discovery 
of the New World, and of the sea route to India, had been 
events which gradually altered the whole method and scale 
on which European commerce was carried on. The applica- 
Sion of water-power, and of steam, to do the work which had 
been previously accomplished by human drudgery, is com- 
parable with the commercial revolution of the sixteenth 
century, as a new departure of which we do not even yet 
see the full significance. Physical forces have been utilised so 
as to ald man in his work ; and the introduction of machinery 
continues slowly, but surely, to revolutionise the habits and 
organisation of industrial life in all parts of the globe. Half- 
civilised and barbarous peoples are compelled to have re- 
course, as far as may be, to modern weapons and modern 
means of communication; they cannot hold aloof, or deny 
themselves the use of such appliances. But the adoption of entails a 
modern methods of production and traffic is hardly consistent en 
with the maintenance of the old social order, in any country Z22% 
on this earth. England was the pioneer of the application of 
mechanism to industry, and thus became the workshop of the 
world, so that other countries have been inspired by her ex- 
ample. The policy of endeavouring to retain the advantages 
of machinery for England alone was mooted, but never very 
seriously pursued, and it was definitely abandoned in 1825. 
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