10. Custom and Law

Abstract

This chapter examines the period between the accession of the younger Pitt to the office of Prime Minister in 1783 and Parliament's adoption of the Speenhamland system in 1795, with an eye to solving the riddle of why during this period appeals to custom and customary forms of protest became more, a social phenomenon in British social life and politics. From this it follows that in seeking to understand the role of custom during the period of the Industrial Revolution, the author emphasizes the need to examine far more than the strict institutional foundations of the customary law of the manor. If we can look beyond its ahistoricism and tendency to universalise capitalist economics, in some ways Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations reads like a snapshot of the state of agrarian capitalism at the barest advent of industrial capitalism and just prior to the advent of the factory system.Keywords:Adam Smith; agrarian capitalism; British politics; capitalist economics; customary law; Industrial Revolution; Pitt; Speenhamland