J. H. Plumb on Georgian era

“The appetite of England had been whetted by the rapid commercial expansion. A world of never-ending luxury could be won by vigorous and aggressive action against her competitors; so it seemed to many of London's merchants. That war would bring commercial wealth was a deep-seated belief which influenced English politics profoundly.”

“The age of Walpole was rough, coarse, brutal; a world for the muscular and the aggressive and the cunning. The thin veneer of elegance and classic form obscured but never hid either the crime and dissipation or the drab middle-class virtue and thrift. For the majority of England, life was hard and vile, but the expanding world of commerce and the rich harvests brought both prosperity and opportunity, which bred a boundless self-confidence.”

“The success of the slave trade agitation has obscured a great deal of the Sect's other social work. Active Christianity was the panacea for the world's ills; in consequence, education and missionary enterprise were more important to the Sect than the more direct ameliorations of social conditions, such as control of child labour, shorter working hours, cheap food, and higher wages. They and their supporters set up schools for the poor, especially Sunday Schools for ragged children, which were interested principally in the inculcation of morals and Christian principles, as narrowly interpreted by Simeon or Wilberforce. Not only the poor received their attention, but also the wealthy and middle classes, and, in spite of much aggressive opposition, prudish piety began slowly to replace that frank cynicism which had been the hall-mark of eighteenth-century fashion.”

“Trade was a national preoccupation and the constant concern of Parliament and the government, for all his contemporaries were agreed with Defoe that trade was the cause of England's increasing wealth. The trade of England, both overseas and domestic, was extremely rich and varied, based partly on things made or grown at home and partly on an extensive re-export trade of raw materials from the colonies in America and luxury goods from the East. In order to encourage trade, Walpole removed all restrictive measures on the export of English manufactured goods. He also allowed into the country the raw materials needed for them duty free. But, of course, there was no general tendency towards free trade. Everyone, including Walpole, believed that English manufacturers had to be protected at all costs. The Irish were forbidden to make cloth or export their wool to anywhere but England in case the greatest of all English industries – cloth manufacture – should be endangered in any way. This fear of foreign competition was at times carried to fantastic lengths: it was an offence to shear sheep within four miles of the coast in case the fleeces should be smuggled overseas. Yet this attitude – absurd as it might be in many manifestations – was fundamentally realistic. Eighteenth-century politicians realised with great clarity that wealth meant power. Chatham, who was more preoccupied with England's grandeur than any other statesman, planned his campaigns with the merchants of London and planned them to capture French trade. For trade was wealth and wealth was power.”