What was needed also was the expansion of English commerce into the new channels opened for it by the victories of Chatham.

Mr.Chief Justice Holt had given it the legal categories it would require; and Hume and Adam Smith were to explain that commerce might grow with small danger to agricultural prosperity.

Beneath the apparent calm of Walpole's rule new forces were fast stirring.

That can be seen on every side.

The sturdy morality of Johnson, the new literary forms of Richardson and Fielding, the theatre which Garrick founded upon the ruins produced by Collier's indignation, the revival of which Law and Wesley are the great symbols, show that the stagnation was sleep rather than death.