The consequence was the formation of a large class of wage-earners who were thrown back upon the earnings of their own hands, and had little claim, besides their labour, to the consideration of society. The natural tendency to association, which under not dissimilar circumstances had appeared so strongly in the early days of the French Revolution, i.e. the Fédérés, and was the most significant manifestation of national as distinguished from feudal ideas, was in England checked, if not suppressed, by the ferocious Combination Laws. It was not until 1833, with the passing of the first important Factory Act, that public opinion admitted the industrial employees to a claim upon society and public attention. The Factory Acts and cognate legislation substituted a public guarantee, based on the authority of the State, for that private and traditional guarantee of the conditions of life which semi-feudal society had maintained. But between the disappearance of the one and the establishment of the other lies a full generation, during which the working classes, often ignorant, unled, ill-advised, sought refuge in their isolation and helplessness against economic and governmental oppression.
In a world of injustice and inequality, the working men found hope and a call to action in those theories of natural rights and justice which the French Revolution had popularised. The rights of man were contrasted with the wrongs inflicted by the new state of society, and out of the conflict were developed political and social theories of a social-democratic character. It is not maintained that English Socialism developed out of the ideas of the Revolution. It was, on the other hand, largely a native growth, deriving its strength from its criticism of the developing English industrial society, and its economics from the writings of Ricardo. At the same time its constructive side, which of course was its weakest, was based upon theories of abstract justice, and these notions had received a great impetus from the French Revolution. Through Paine and Godwin they had been introduced in a complete form to the English public. Yet, as has been pointed out previously, such ideas were prevalent within a limited circle during the Puritan Revolution, and may even be traced in the famous Utopia of More and the equally famous couplet of John Ball. The pre-revolutionary ferment in France did produce its socialistic writers—Morelly, Mably, and to a degree Rousseau himself. Though the teaching of Morelly as to the beneficent influence of suitable environment
