The agricultural depression completed the evolution from a rural to an industrial ...

The agricultural depression completed the evolution from a rural to an industrial state which the application of steam to machinery had begun, and it accelerated the further evolution from an industrial to a financial state. Great figures, Derby, Shaftesbury, Salisbury, Hartington, Spencer, still kept the aristocratic idea alive and forcible.

But gradually the deference which had been directed to birth, when birth meant commonly land and wealth, moved, as the land grew poorer, towards wealth itself.

And not only the landed man, but the merchant and manufacturer also were coming to be overshadowed by the financier, the swiftness of his winnings, the riot of his display.' There had been bursts of company promoting before, in the twenties, forties, and sixties. But the first man to appreciate the unlimited possibilities of limited liability was Albert Gottheim, otherwise Baron Grant, towards whose great house on the outskirts of Kensington Palace, a trustful public had contributed, it was reckoned, some twenty million pounds.