First of all the thesis of this text is that economic science has helped Europe to growth. The author, Arnold Toynbee starts obviously from the definition of the Revolution that is a process which change England’s economy during the 18^th-century.

The most important causes of this process are that competition is not necessary to control the production and distribution of wealth. Regarding this idea the author writes about four people that during the century wrote books.

The first book was written by Adam Smith and the title is Wealth of Nations: it deals with the production of wealth and which is the purpose of the substation of industrial freedom.

The second was composed by Malthus: The Essay on Population tries to understand the causes of poverty.

The third book was written by Ricardo and its title is Principles of Politically Economy and Taxation: here he studied in particular how wealth is distributed and tries to find a fair way to correct this problem.

The last book in order to support the thesis was composed by John Stuart Mill and its title is Principles of Politically Economy: he analyses the different between the production and the distribution. Besides, he writes this book a lots time later, so he saw the change during this period and he could write a different analysis. In the same year, Karl Marx published another famous book known as Capital: it was exported in  England because it was the only country with an economics’s growth.

Moreover there was an increase of population, but as I have said the distribution of wealth wasn’t equally: in fact Mill understood that if the state doesn’t regulate the laws of markets a lot of people will be very poor, caused by free competition.

On the other hand there was an agrarian revolution: in fact the destruction of the common field, the enclosure of common and waste lands and the consolidation of small farms into large were the first causes. The most important changes are: the breed of cattle was improved, rotation of crops and was invented the steam-plough.

Thanks of the industrial revolution there were a lots of advances in textile industry: the spinning-jenny, steam-engine and the water frame are some example.

These new machineries and changes in agricultural succeeded the work of men that could find a job into the industry.

Moreover, the means of communication were improved and there was a development of trade thanks of the building of railroads, bridges and roads.

This development causes a growth of wealth that involved an equal distribution: in fact in this period didn’t exist the manufactures families because all together entried in a big system called economy.

Nevertheless the distribution of wealth was left a dream and this prove that free competition may produce it without producing an equal well-being.