"With regard to the continent of Europe, the popular impression that the eighteenth century was effete and conventional has at least a certain relation to truth... But when we turn to the Britain of the period we have a different story to tell. This was the time when our fathers conquered Canada and half India, rediscovered and began to settle Australia, and traded on an ever-increasing scale all over the inhabited globe; reorganized British agriculture on modern methods; began the Industrial Revolution in our island, thence in later times to spread over the whole world; and if the thirteen American colonies were at the same time lost to the British Empire, it was the result less of decadence in Great Britain than of young and mutinous energies in English America."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
G. M. Trevelyan, 'The Age of Johnson', in A. S. Turberville (ed.), Johnson's England: An Account of the Life & Manners of His Age, Vol. I (1933), pp. 2-3
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Georgian_era
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Georgian era
17 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Georgian era →
Related Quotes
"In the eighteenth century the English ruling classes – squirearchy, merchants, aristocracy – were men hard of mind an…"
"Unlike most of Europe, Britain had no censorship and its political press was both more sophisticated and more widely …"
"William Warburton's Alliance between Church and State was published at the time of greatest strain in 1736. It offere…"
"Trade was a national preoccupation and the constant concern of Parliament and the government, for all his contemporar…"
"The appetite of England had been whetted by the rapid commercial expansion. A world of never-ending luxury could be w…"
"The age of Walpole was rough, coarse, brutal; a world for the muscular and the aggressive and the cunning. The thin v…"
"The success of the slave trade agitation has obscured a great deal of the Sect's other social work. Active Christiani…"
"Out of doors, crime was rife and often bloody: smugglers had little compunction about slaying excise officers. And, f…"
"Upright citizens – not just blackguards and bravoes but the village Hampden too – did not shrink from force to get th…"
"The lava flow of violence ran through the political landscape, sometimes underground, sometimes on the surface. Unpop…"