CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



IN the history of every nation there arrives a time when, 

 as civilisation becomes more pronounced and society more 

 complex, its individual members organise themselves into 

 groups for offensive or defensive purposes. In this country, 

 isolated by the sea, and not afflicted with the existence of 

 secret societies, the earliest grouping took the form of Guilds, 

 which were founded rather for the sake of advertising the wares 

 of members of those bodies or for undertaking joint adventures 

 in foreign and unknown lands, than for political purposes. 

 Until towards the end of the eighteenth century the staple 

 industry of the country was agriculture. Apart from a limited 

 number of merchants, shopkeepers and fishermen, practically 

 everyone was more or less directly interested in the land, and 

 the proportion of the population living in towns was a com- 

 paratively negligible quantity. Members of Parliament 

 represented nominally small pocket boroughs, but actually 

 the whole district round those boroughs, and in the great 

 majority of cases were either landowners themselves or 

 members of landowning families. Their interest was in, and 

 their knowledge was of, the land ; with the exception of a 

 certain number of representatives of the legal profession, 

 Parliament was in the main recruited from this class. 



In those days the interests of town and country had not 

 developed the sharp divergences of to-day, and Members of 

 Parliament were grouped rather as personal supporters of 

 the leaders whom they elected to follow as individuals, than 

 as actuated by differing policies or conflicting interests. 

 Even when the manufacturing classes increased in numbers 

 and forced their way within the walls cf Parliament, the 

 conflict of interests between different forms of industry was 



B 



