The  great  invention  of  printing  was  the  work  of  the  Ehenish
Germans,  and  it  appears  at  Mainz.  It  was  introduced,  as  we  know,
into  England  by  Caxton,  about  thirty  years  later.  He  learnt
the  art  in  the  Netherlands.  His  successors  in  the  art,  such  as
Wynkyn  de  Worde,  were  foreigners,  or  taught  by  foreigners.  The
principal  printer  of  Henry  VIII.'s  reign  is  Berthollet,  whose  name
may  be  taken  to  designate  his  origin.  Nor  do  I  think  that  it  made
much  progress  in  England.  It  seems  to  me  rather  to  deteriorate
during  the  sixteenth  century  ;  the  type  to  become  more  clumsy  and
coarse,  and  the  impression  less  clear.  In  these  industrial  arts  then,
which  I  have  taken  as  illustrations  only,  I  think  I  have  made  out


PAPEB,    TEXTILE  INDU8TBIES,  281

that  the  English  were  not  an  inventive  people,  and  that  they  did
not  even  readily  adopt  what  other  people  had  long  invented.  I  will
now  attempt  to  show  what  they  did  do,  to  venture  on  some  explana-
tion of  their  exceedingly  slow  and  imperfect  progress,  and  to  give
my  solution  of  the  movement  which  began  at  the  end  of  the  seven-
teenth, and  became  characteristic,  traditional,  and  progressive  in
the  eighteenth,  and  onwards.  The  causes  will  be  principally  seen
to  be  social  and  political.  You  cannot,  of  course,  separate,  except
in  thought,  and  then  only  with  no  little  risk  of  confusion,  economi-
cal from  social  and  political  facts.  Fortunately,  though  some  of
the  social  and  political  forces  are  enduring,  their  origin  is  so  far
archaic,  that  they  need  not  frighten  the  most  sensitive  member  of
the  Liberty  and  Property  Defence  League.
