PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century changed the face of England and brought to the manufacturing class wealth and prominence.

The population of Lancashire was not more than 300,000 in 1760, the West Riding of Yorkshire about 360,000, and the total population of England 6,000,000.
The inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, Crompton, Watt, and Cartwright revolutionised the cotton trade in the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, and increased enormously the production of woollen goods.

England ceased to be mainly a nation of farmers and merchants; domestic manufacture gave way to the factory system; the labouring people, unable to make a living in the country, gathered into the towns.

The long series of Enclosure Acts--1760-1843--turned seven million acres of common land into private property, and with this change in agrarian conditions and the growth of population England ceased to be a corn-exporting country, and became dependent on foreign nations for its food supply.
While these industrial and agrarian changes meant a striking increase in wealth and population, they were accompanied by untold misery to the common people.
"Instead of the small master working in his own home with his one or two apprentices and journeymen, the rich capitalist-employer with his army of factory hands grew up.

Many of these masters were rough, illiterate and hard, though shrewd and far-seeing in business.