2 FOUNDATION AND OBJECTS 



reconstruction was (as it needs must be) protracted, 

 and in England, in certain respects at least, more 

 so than elsewhere. The industrial revolution had 

 brought with it an independent class sentiment 

 among the industrial population on the one hand 

 and the agricultural and landowning classes on the 

 other ; the evils associated with the concentration 

 of large industrial communities were intensified by 

 the financial burden and inflation of prices con- 

 sequent upon the war, and superposed upon all 

 this was the existence of an unrepresentative parlia- 

 mentary system. Already before 1814 the ' Luddite ' 

 bands of workless artisans had attacked factories 

 equipped with labour-saving machinery, which was 

 regarded as the immediate cause of unemploy- 

 ment, and from such incidents alone (apart from 

 other conditions) it may reasonably be assumed 

 that neither labour on the one hand nor the Govern- 

 ment on the other would be favourably disposed 

 toward the advancement of applied science. The 

 prevalent distress germinated in 1819 into the cry 

 for parliamentary reform, but thirteen years of 

 struggle passed before the Keform Bill became law 

 (1832). 



Class patriotism, then, had succeeded common 

 patriotism the succession was inevitable in those 

 years no less than a century later and the 

 representatives of science were no doubt inspired 

 (or infected) by it. In certain directions, as we 

 have said, reconstruction in England lagged behind 

 that in other countries : the advancement of science 

 supplied an instance. From about 1826 onward 

 this state of affairs began to find loud expression 

 through many eminent scientific men of the time. 



