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For Locke, the most important aspect of self-interest was the safeguarding of personal possessions. The ultimate goal of all societies, he felt, was to preserve the property rights of the individual. Each man had property as a result of his labours and should legitimately own what he could manage. The value of the property depended on the labour it took to create. The community existed because men agreed ‘with other men to join or unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another’. In return for the security provided, ‘every man by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority.rsquo;

In submitting to government, the only rights a man would give up were those needed legally to ensure ‘natural’ behaviour. According to Locke,

Political power is a right of making laws with penalties of death, and… all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws in defence of the commonwealth from common injury - and all this only for the public good.

Locke saw the relation between citizen and government in business terms, as a ‘social contract’. The government might put a man to death but it might not deprive him or his family of his property without his consent, ‘the preservation of property being the end of government’. To this contract Locke added a rider which is echoed in modern government: that the legislative power in the state must not be in the same hands as those holding executive power. The social contract would only work if this condition were met, because without separation of powers tyranny was possible.

Locke compared the business relationship with that between king and country. The government was primarily interested in fostering both, so tax laws made investment attractive. There was no tax on profits, only on consumption and imports. It was very profitable to manufacture and sell. The problem was that at the beginning of the eighteenth century expansion of industry through investment was unlikely because industry was not in need of funds.

Most production centres were situated well away from the towns, in woods where fuel was readily available and near the hill-streams and fast rivers which provided water power to drive the mills. Iron-makers were itinerant, carrying their hammers, bellows, forges and so on around from place to place as the supply of wood ran out and charcoal had to be sought elsewhere.

The homespun textile industry. Here, a view of workers preparing flax in Ulster. On the left, spinning the yarn; centre, boiling it; and right, reeling it for use.

The textile industry was the largest and most widely spread, and was also situated in the hills. There, among the sheep, a community of cottagers would share out the various stages of production. Some families would sort and clean the wool, others would comb and card, spin, weave, stretch, bleach, dress, shear, full and dye.

In the case of both textile and iron industries work was irregular and seasonal. In both cases overheads were small: cash was needed principally for wages. Apart from their dependence on the very limited supplies of fuel after the wood famine began to make itself felt around 1700, manufacturers faced difficulties in obtaining materials from suppliers and delivering the finished product to market. Road transportation was extremely hazardous in spite of the fact that in 1663 Parliament had ordered Justices of the Peace to improve local roads and set up turnpikes in order to pay for the improvements.

By 1700 the age of the turnpike had begun in earnest, though standards varied from place to place according to how seriously local JPs took their responsibilities. Maintenance and repair also took longer because the English did not use the French system of corves, chain-gangs