*The pin that pricked the bubble was the discovery that Sir John Blount and other promoters of the scheme had quietly disposed of their stock.

While the events previously enumerated were transpiring at home, England was developing a colonial empire of large proportions in America. Had her statesmen pursued the same liberal and enlightened policy towards her American Colonies at that time which characterizes her present system of colonial government, she might have continued to hold and control her American possessions indefinitely, but instead she proceeded upon the false theory that her colonies were proper subjects to be governed and exploited for the benefit of the mother country - a theory which has been steadily pursued by Spain up to the present time, resulting in the loss of almost all of her colonial possessions. All imports to the colonies from any other country in Europe were forbidden in order to give English manufacturers a monopoly of the American trade. Then in 1660 an act was passed prohibiting the colonies from exporting certain enumerated articles to foreign countries without being first brought to England and there unladen and then re-shipped by English merchants. The enumerated articles were tobacco, sugar, corn, iron, molasses, ginger, cotton, indigo, coffee, skins and lumber - just the commodities which the American and West Indian colonies produced in most abundance.

The colonists were not only compelled to sell their surplus products through English merchants and send them in English vessels, but they were equally forced to buy all imported goods from England. An act was passed in 1663 prohibiting any article from being sent into the colonies except the same was sent from an English port and in an English ship. Home manufactures among the colonies were discouraged and suppressed. Woolen manufactures were forbidden in 1719 and iron in 1750. Colonial hatters were not allowed to send hats from one colony to another. Thus the colonists were hampered and forced to pay unjust tribute to home ships and merchants. This unfair and narrow-minded policy caused much discontent and irritation among the Americans, and was openly and ably opposed by an

Colonial Policy element in Parliament headed by the great statesman William Pitt, but without result. Finally the culmination came on the celebrated occasion when the citizens of Boston emptied a shipload of East Indian tea into their harbor, and war was openly declared and begun in 1775.

We have now reached a period in history celebrated for social, political and industrial revolutions. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century the human mind seems to have awakened to a new development and realization of its possibilities. The principles of republican government were enunciated by the American colonists in 1775, and their war of independence fought to a successful issue in 1783. The doctrine that the power of the state resided in the people and not in the sovereign was the seed which, transplanted to French soil, ripened into the great social and political revolution of France in 1789. In England during this period a mighty though silent, industrial revolution was going on, occasioned by the invention of improved machinery and the introduction of steam power. Prior to this time nearly all of the manufacturing in England, as well as other countries, had been done by hand in the homes or little shops of the workmen, aided by their families and apprentices. The methods were crude, tedious and difficult, causing manufactured goods to be both imperfect and expensive. A series of useful inventions following closely upon each other changed all this, increased the power of production in mining, manufacturing and agriculture a hundredfold or more, and made England the richest nation in the world.

Henceforth by the use of labor-saving machinery men were able to produce not only better wares and of more uniform quality, but in far greater quantities in proportion to the labor employed, and hence much cheaper in cost. But in order to utilize this machinery it became necessary that workmen should congregate, and thus the introduction of machinery brought about the factory system. Costly and intricate machines as well as buildings in which to conduct the work were necessary. This required the amassing of capital - a new feature of the industrial problem. At first factories were located near streams where water power could be obtained, but with the advent of the steam engine they could be located near towns where there was an abundant labor supply, and as the means of transportation improved, less regard need be had for the location of the raw product. The introduction of the factory system marked an era in the industrial progress of England and the world, and the bringing of workmen together and into more intimate association with each other had a radical influence upon them intellectually.

Chief among the inventions which brought about this industrial revolution was the steam engine of James Watt, who took out his patent in 1769. This was preceded in 1767 by the spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves, whereby many threads could be spun at once instead of a single thread as heretofore, and this to be followed later with improvements in the methods of spinning and weaving wool and cotton by Arkwright, Cromp-ton, Cartwright and others. These inventions completely revolutionized the manufacture of cotton and woolen goods, and these industries went forward with a bound. Manchester attained great importance on account of the magnitude of its factories. Liverpool, hitherto a straggling fishing town, became a leading city, importing large quantities of raw cotton and exporting the finished goods. Silk manufacture was similarly promoted. The construction of machinery necessitated the use of coal and gave a new impetus to mining, while the use of the steam engine enabled the miners to pump the water out of the mines - a thing which they had not been able to do by means of the crude hand pumps formerly used. Processes of smelting and developing ore, and the manufacture of steel were greatly improved. Birmingham and Sheffield date their vast hardware and cutlery trade from Era of Inventions the invention of the puddling furnace by. Cort in 1783, whereby wrought iron was produced by the use of the coal found in close proximity to both the ore and the limestone which is used as a flux. By means of this invention immense quantities of ore were utilized which would otherwise have been worthless.