To what, then, was this increase in industrial productivity due?
It was not due to any change in the spontaneous workings of nature.
It can only have been due to some change in the character of human effort--either in that of the effort of each separate manual labourer, or else in that of the men by whom the labour of others is directed.

The average labourer, however, at the close of the nineteenth century did not differ, as an isolated labouring unit, from the average labourer as he was at the time of the fire of London.

The increase in industrial productivity must therefore be necessarily due to a change in the ability of those by whom the labourers are organised and directed.

And here _a priori_ reasoning is confirmed by actual facts, for the change which has taken place in the class which directs the labour of others has been, during the period in question, of the most notorious and astonishing kind.

That class had been progressively absorbing into itself, and concentrating on the conduct of industry, ambitions, intelligences, and strong practical wills, which formerly found their outlets in very different channels--ecclesiastical, political, and more especially military.