Introduction

Abstract

T H E years between 1780 and 1850 saw fundamental changes in social relationships in Britain which were associated with that acceleration in economic and technological change which historians since Toynbee have called the industrial revolution. The impact of these changes was great enough to create a new vocabulary. ‘Industry’, ‘factory’, ‘strikes’, ‘statistics’, ‘scientist’ and ‘railway’ all came into common use or developed new meanings during that period [R. Williams, 1958: 13; Hobsbawm, 1962: 17]. The most important of these innovations was the language of class [Briggs, 1960]. The language of ‘ranks’ and ‘orders’ which belonged to the writing of Gregory King, Daniel Defoe, Archdeacon Paley and Edmund Burke recognised social inequality and graded men into a hierarchy which was linked by ‘chains’ and ‘bonds’. The use of this language implied an acceptance of inequality. Paley accepted the existence of these ranks as the will of God. Each rank and station had its own duties and rights. The rich had the right to power and property and the obligation to care for the poor. ‘To abolish riches’, he wrote, ‘would not be to abolish poverty; but on the contrary, to leave it without protection or resource.’ After 1780 this language was slowly replaced by the language of class, which first appeared among the philosophers Millar and Gisbourne.