Page:Future of England - Peel.djvu/40

28 the idea of ruling men in one all-important matter, its authority in matters less momentous was undermined and broken. The second cause that originated this movement when and where it did, was that, as liberty was ever in difficulties on the Continent, and ever conquering here, there arrived on our shores, and settled in our midst, for a space of two centuries, the very choicest workmen of Europe. The more the history of almost every trade, apart from some of the great staple trades, is studied, the more it is clear that in all that ministers to the convenience, the efficiency, the luxury, the amenity of life, we owe an incalculable debt to the refugees from continental despotism. But, after all, the third and main reason of the industrial revolution was that every Englishman had become aware that he had attained the stature and the rights of manhood. This liberated a force among us which in its practical result had till then no parallel in the world. Men turned to conquering nature with a zeal which to-day can best be understood by those who have breathed the air of an Australia, a Canada, a South Africa, or an United States, those homes of the English people where the energy of our eighteenth century is reproduced before our eyes.

Thus was it that an inventive genius which owed scarcely anything to science or education, produced, by an otherwise inexplicable marvel, those wonders that have so largely reshaped human life—the power-loom, the steam engine,