Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

49. Ibid., page 327. Samuel Galton, grandfather of Francis, the founder of eugenics, was yet another who moved on from the Warrington Academy to the Lunar Society: he formed one of the earliest collections of scientific instruments. Thomas Day was most famous for his children’s stories; he wrote ‘pompously and vapidly’, according to one account, but he lent money to the other members to support their activities. Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History on Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth Century England, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, page 53. James Keir, a former professional soldier, tried his hand at extracting alkalis from kelp (his method worked but the yield was too small) and then, having fought in France, and being fluent in French, translated Macquer’s Dictionary of Chemistry, a distinguished (and highly practical) work, which helped establish the reputation of the Lunar Society.

50. John Graham Gillam, The Crucible: The Story of Joseph Priestley LLD, FRS, London: Robert Hale, 1959, page 138.

51. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 329.

52. Ibid., page 330.

53. Ibid., page 329.

54. See: Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future, London: Faber & Faber, 2002, especially pages 210–221, 237, 370 and 501.

55. Schofield, Op. cit., page 440.

56. When the state of Massachusetts made its famous protest in the 1760s, that the British government had no right to tax the colony because there was no representative of Massachusetts in Parliament, part of the British government’s reply was that Manchester had no representation either. Henry Steel Commager, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realised the Enlightenment, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978/2000; but see also Gillam, Op. cit., page 182, for the atmosphere in Birmingham.

57. Landes, Unbound Prometheus, Op. cit., page 23.

58. Ibid., pages 25–26.

59. Ibid., pages 22–23, for a good discussion of the controversy.

60. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, London: Gollancz, 1963, page 807f.

61. Ibid., chapter 16, pages 781ff.

62. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 339.

63. Athol Fitzgibbons, Adam Smith’s System of Liberty, Wealth and Virtue: The Moral and Political Foundation of the Wealth of Nations, Oxford: The Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1995, pages 5ff.

64. Landes, Unbound Prometheus, Op. cit., page 246.

65. David Weatherall, David Ricardo, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976, page 27, for his break with religion.

66. Ibid., page 147.

67. J. K. Galbraith, A History of Economics, London: Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Books, 1987/1991, page 84.

68. Ibid., page 118.

69. R. W. Harris, Romanticism and the Social Order, London: Blandford, 1969, page 78.

70. Frank Podmore, Robert Owen, New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968, page 188.

71. A. L. Morton, The Life and Ideas of Robert Owen, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1963, page 92.

72. Ibid., pages 88ff.

73. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., pages 450ff.

74. Harris, Op. cit., page 80. Podmore, Op. cit., page 88, and page 80 for a photograph of the New Lanark mills.

75. He also provided an institute where evening lectures were given for those who wanted to carry on learning after they left school. Morton. Op. cit., page 106.

76. Bronowski and Mazlish, Op. cit., page 456.