Manchester and the Birth of the Industrial Revolution

What was so exciting about Manchester? Disraeli with his acute political and historical instinct understood that Manchester had done something unique and revolutionary. Only he was wrong to call it science. What Manchester had done was to invent the Industrial Revolution, a new style of life and work which began in that little country town about two hundred years ago and inexorably grew and spread out from there until it had turned the whole world upside down. Disraeli was the first politicia...

 William Lawrence Withdrawls "Natural History of Man"

William Lawrence’s experiment ended in an altogether different way. At the end of 1819 he withdrew his Natural History of Man, yielding to pressure from the Royal College of Surgeons and a number of medical institutions. But he continued to speak out in favour of scientific freedom. ‘I take the opportunity of protesting, in the strongest possible terms … against the attempt to stifle impartial enquiry by an outcry of pernicious tendency; and against perverting science and literature, wh...