THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC LIBERALISM I The Industrial Revolution is hardly less a fundamental change in the habits of English thought than in the technique of commercial production.

Alongside the discoveries of Hargreaves and Crompton, the ideas of Hume and Adam Smith shifted the whole perspective of men's minds.

The Revolution, indeed, like all great movements, did not originate at any given moment.

There was no sudden invention which made the hampering system of government-control seem incompatible with industrial advance.

The mercantilism against which the work of Adam Smith was so magistral a protest was already rather a matter of external than internal commerce when he wrote.