OF INDUSTRIES. 29 



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 Continent. 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 pro- 

 letaires, and, by favouring the former to the 

 detriment of the latter, it compelled the labour- 

 ers who had no household nor land to aban- 

 don their villages, and thus to form the first 

 nucleus of working classes given up to the mercy 

 of manufacturers. Moreover, the peasant-pro- 

 prietors themselves, after having enjoyed a 

 period of undeniable prosperity, began in their 

 turn to feel the pressure of bad times, and their 

 * See Appendix A. 



