the lower orders, of feelings of more or less contented dependence upon the great man at the top—feelings which were religiously inculcated on the basis of "the station of life in which it has pleased God to place you." On the other hand the landowner repaid such sentiments with some real degree of personal interest in the welfare of his subjects, and maintained a certain amount of security and stability, which enabled them to live with some expectation that their lot would never be worse, though it might not be better. Stability, security, and dependence were the essentials of this social system. In industry relations were otherwise but not essentially different. The merchant manufacturer played the part of the landowner. He was often in personal touch with those he employed, living usually in the neighbourhood. The family system of manufacture kept alive feelings of associated enterprise and mutual dependence. The market was known; prices were fixed by custom and not merely by competition. Steady trade rather than speculative enterprise was the rule and the ideal.
Under the influence of that commercial and speculative spirit which prepared the way for the great changes both in agriculture and industry, these social relationships broke down. They were unsuited to a period when movement and enterprise replaced solid security as the basis of economic life. The unlimited unknown of commerce was preferred to the limited known, and Captain Cook's voyages into the distant Pacific were paralleled by many a commercial speculator in the realms of economic enterprise. Acquisition of wealth, which opened up to many the prospects of social advancement, destroyed the old feeling of contented acceptance of that station of life in which they were born. Hence came the increasing specialisation in agriculture and industry, the enclosures which alone made possible the improvement of agricultural methods, and the machinery which superseded men. Employers employed no longer men but hands, no longer human beings but labour, and the relation between the two gradually developed into the payment of cash which was held to cover all the obligations of the one to the other. Payment for labour, conditions of housing, help in bad times, education, all these were now commuted in the payment of a weekly wage. In industry this process was encouraged by the rapid rise to fortune of poor men who had never been influenced by the ancient semi-feudal traditions or by the surviving gild spirit.
