In the war waged by modern industry against the latter, it was England again who showed the way.
Between the civil revolution, whereby England led the modern world to political liberty, and the industrial revolution whereby she initiated our emancipation, more completely than ever before, from the dominion of nature, there is an intimate, and even necessary, connection. For to live free was little, if life had no strength. Therefore, to grapple with nature, nay more, to renew and reconstitute it, now became her purpose. Every mechanical artifice, every novel form of power harnessed to man's service, every substance rendered chemically pure for manufacture, every race of plants or stock of animals bred up to be abnormally fertile or vigorous by human agency, is part of this new nature, this novel birth of time.
That this industrial revolution, which is still in process, began when it did in the eighteenth century, and began in England, is due to three converging causes, all referable to freedom. First, the definite failure of the State in the religious sphere had a notable reaction upon its civil policy. The mediæval Church had aimed at dominating the individual in all departments of life. The modern State, in succeeding to the authority of the Church, had been only too willing to prolong and perpetuate that ascendency, and, in this respect, the English government, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century was still mediæval in some respects. But now that the State was disclaiming
