THE DECENTRALISATION OF INDUSTRIES. 9 



person considered rich on the Continent appear as only 

 of modest means in Britain was introduced during that 

 time. The taxed property alone doubled during the 

 last thirty years of the above period, while during the 

 same years (1810 to 1878) no less than 1,112,000,000 

 nearly 2,000,000,000 by this time was invested by 

 English capitalists either in foreign industries or in 

 foreign loans. 



But the monopoly of industrial production could not 

 remain with England for ever. Neither industrial 

 knowledge nor enterprise could be kept for ever as a 

 privilege of these islands. Necessarily, fatally, they 

 began to cross the Channel and spread over the Con- 

 tinent. The Great Revolution had created in France 

 a numerous class of peasant-proprietors, who enjoyed 

 nearly half a century of a comparative well-being, or, 

 at least, of a guaranteed labour. The ranks of homeless 

 town workers increased slowly. But the middle-class 

 revolution of 1789-1793 had already made a distinction 

 between the peasant householders and the village 

 proletaires, and, by favouring the former to the detri- 

 ment of the latter, it compelled the labourers who had 

 no household nor land to abandon their villages, and 

 thus to form the first nucleus of working classes 

 given up to the mercy of manufacturers. Moreover, 

 the peasant-proprietors themselves, after having enjoyed 

 a period of undeniable prosperity, began in their turn 

 to feel the pressure of bad times, and were compelled to 

 look for employment in manufactures. Wars and re- 

 volution had checked the growth of industry ; but it 

 began to grow again during the second half of our 

 century ; it developed, it improved ; and now, notwith- 

 standing the loss of Alsace, France is no longer the 

 tributary to England for manufactured produce which 

 she was forty years ago. To-day her exports of manu- 

 factured goods are valued at nearly one-half of those of 

 Great Britain, and two-thirds of them are textiles ; 



