In the last half of the eighteenth century, improvement began through the "turnpike" roads, which were kept in repair with the money collected as "tolls" from those who used them. Better methods of road-making were introduced by skilled engineers. The most noted of these was a Scotchman, named MacAdam, whose name is still remembered in our "macadamized" roads. These roads made possible the use of carriages all the year round, while new "fast mail coaches" were established to run between the chief parts of England, in what then seemed like an incredibly short time. Canals were also built, which greatly cheapened the cost of carrying such bulky goods as coal and iron. It was not until the next century that the steam railroad and the steamboat were introduced; but already changes were being produced by these improvements, which were only a little less important than those which the railroad brought.
"It is scarcely half a century," says a writer of this time, "since the inhabitants of the distant counties were regarded as almost as different from those of the capital as the natives of the Cape of Good Hope. Their manners, as well as their speech, were entirely provincial; and their dress no more resembled that of London than the Turkish or Chinese. A journey into the country was then considered almost as great an undertaking as a voyage to the Indies. The old family coach was sure to be stowed with all sorts of luggage and provisions; and, perhaps, in the course of the journey a whole village, together with their teams, might be called on to aid in digging the heavy carriage out of the clay. But now the improvements in traveling have opened a new communication between the capital and the most distant parts of the kingdom. The manners, fashions, and amusements of the capital now make their way to the remotest corners of the land. French cooks are employed, the same wines are drunk, the same gaming practiced, the same hours kept, and the same course of life pursued, in the country as in town. Every male and female wishes to think and speak, to eat and drink, and dress and live after the manner of people of quality of London."
One result of the introduction of machinery was to increase the wealth, and hence the importance, of the tradesmen and manufacturers. The old aristocratic organization of society, which regarded certain persons as better than others merely because of their better birth, began to give way, and a democratic influence began to be felt. The working classes profited, in the end, not merely in better clothes and better food and better lodging, but in better education and more political rights. But these changes came only gradually, and mostly after the eighteenth century had passed.
Scene in a Farmhouse Kitchen
Simpler modes of dress and of life, however, came before the century was out. Gentlemen began to leave off wearing the sword, and the powdered wigs which once they all wore. Cocked hats went out of fashion, and pantaloons too the place of knee-breeches. Umbrellas were introduced. From about 1750, pianos began to appear in the houses of the wealthy. The better classes of tradesmen ceased to live over their stores, and the apprentices were no longer lodged with their masters. Men's dress generally became less showy than it had been. Women's costumes became more brilliantly colored and finer, as a result of the new calicoes and other dress goods, which could now be easily and cheaply obtained. In general, the last twenty years of the eighteenth century and the first twenty years of the nineteenth saw greater changes in dress and manners than for two centuries before.
Deeper than any change in dress and manners was a change in religion, which came in the middle and latter part of this century. This was due to the rise of the "Methodists" (as they were called), first within the established Church of England, and then as a separate church denomination. Unlike most of the other changes related in this chapter, the rise of the Methodists had little connection with the rise of manufactures. It began at the University of Oxford, and was a reaction against the lifeless preaching and worldly lives of so many of the English clergy, who thought more of horses, hounds, and hunting than they did of their religious duties.
The chief leaders in this movement were two brothers—John and Charles Wesley—and their friend, George Whitefield. They preached to the common people, in the mining and manufacturing towns, and in the great cities, urging them to forsake evil ways and reform their lives. At times, crowds of twenty thousand persons gathered in the open air, to hear them. So earnest were the preachers, and so vividly did they picture the terrors of the hereafter, that men, women, and children would be seized with fits of trembling and shouting, and fall down in convulsions.
John Wesley was the head of the movement. Charles Wesley was its poet, and wrote many hymns for it. Whitefield was even a greater preacher than the Wesleys. During thirty-four years, he preached on average ten times a week. Twelve times he went on preaching trips through Scotland, three times through Ireland, and seven times he visited America. The results of his labors in the American colonies were almost as notable as in the British Isles.
In England, the Methodist movement was strongly opposed by the clergy and upper classes, and also at times by mobs of the common people. But in the end it won a great success. When John Wesley died, in 1791, his followers numbered 100,000. His influence, too, had aroused the established church to greater earnestness and more spiritual religion. And all classes, as a result of these labors, came to have more sympathy for the oppressed, which showed itself in movements to improve the condition of prisoners in jails, and to stop the trade in slaves.
The inventions spoken of in this chapter were all first worked out in Great Britain, and the changes which they produced are often spoken of as the "Industrial Revolution." It was important that it should be accompanied by the great moral and religious revolution described above. The immediate effect of the Industrial Revolution was very greatly to increase the wealth and power of England. Her cheap machine-made goods enabled England to undersell other countries. She soon became the first manufacturing country, as she was already the first country in the amount of her commerce. Her population also increased rapidly. In 1700, England had only 5,000,000 inhabitants; in 1760, there were 6,000,000; in 1800, the number had risen to 9,000,000.
It was chiefly the wealth and power which Great Britain gained from her newly arisen manufactures which prevented her feeling the loss of her American colonies; and it was from this source that she gained the strength which enabled her to resist Napoleon Bonaparte, and finally bring about his overthrow.
Topics for Thought and Search
Find out what you can of James Hargreaves; of James Watt.
Imagine yourself a boy or a girl in the days when spinning and weaving machinery was being introduced, and describe the changes.
Which did most for England, statesmen like Walpole and Pitt, or inventors like Hargreaves and Watt, or reformers like Wyclif and the Wesleys? Give your reasons.
Find out what you can of John Wesley and his work.
England and the French Revolution
The last and greatest of the wars of England against France grew out of the French Revolution, in which the people of that country put to death their King, set up a republic, and sought to extend their principles to other countries.