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Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England
Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England Author:Arnold Toynbee Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: selection, and you could not have a better one than to pay special attention to the history of the social problems which are agitating the world now, for you may... more » be sure that they are problems not of temporary but of lasting importance. ENGLAND IN 1760 POPULATION Numbers of population difficult to determine—Finlaison's estimate— The distribution of population—The growth of the great towns —Rural and urban population—The occupations of the people. Previously to 1760 the old industrial system obtained in England; none of the great mechanical inventions had been introduced; the agrarian changes were still in the future. It is this industrial England which we have to contrast with the industrial England of to-day. For determining the population of the time we have no accurate materials. There are no official returns before 1801. A census had been proposed in 1753, but rejected as 'subversive of the last remains of English liberty.'l In this absence of trustworthy data all sorts of wild estimates were formed. During the American War a great controversy raged on this subject. Dr. Price, an advocate of the Sinking Fund, maintained that population had in the interval between 1690 and 1777 declined from 6,596,075 to4,763,670.! On the other hand, Mr. Hewlett, Vicar of Dunmow, in Essex, estimated the population in 1780 at 8,691,000,2 and Arthur Young, in 1770, at 8,500,000 on the lowest estimate.3 These, however, are the extremes in either direction. The computations now most generally accepted are those made by Mr. Finlaison (Actuary to the National Debt Office), and published in the Preface to the Census Returns of 1831. These are based on an examination of the registers of baptisms and burials of the eighteenth century. But the data are deficient in three respects: because the n...« less