CHAPTER II--LEADERS OF INDUSTRY--INVENTORS AND PRODUCERS
"Le travail et la Science sont desormais les maitres du monde."--De
Salvandy.
"Deduct all that men of the humbler classes have done for England
in the way of inventions only, and see where she would have been
but for them."--Arthur Helps.
One of the most strongly-marked features of the English people is
their spirit of industry, standing out prominent and distinct in
their past history, and as strikingly characteristic of them now as
at any former period. It is this spirit, displayed by the commons
of England, which has laid the foundations and built up the
industrial greatness of the empire. This vigorous growth of the
nation has been mainly the result of the free energy of
individuals, and it has been contingent upon the number of hands
and minds from time to time actively employed within it, whether as
cultivators of the soil, producers of articles of utility,
contrivers of tools and machines, writers of books, or creators of
works of art. And while this spirit of active industry has been
the vital principle of the nation, it has also been its saving and
remedial one, counteracting from time to time the effects of errors
in our laws and imperfections in our constitution.
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