The dethronement of aristocracy in favour of democracy has proceeded on very similar lines. The mass of English people were far too wretched and far too ignorant at the end of the eighteenth century to care anything about abstract "rights of man," and only political philosophers and a few artisans hoped for improvement in their condition by Parliamentary reform. Agricultural England accepted the rule of landowners as an arrangement by providence. It was the industrial revolution that shattered the feudal notions of society, and created a manufacturing population which knew nothing of lowly submission to pastors and masters. A middle-class emerged from the very ranks of the working people. The factory system brought fortunes to men who a few years earlier had been artisans, and to these new capitalists in the nineteenth century the aristocracy in power was as irksome as the Stuarts had been to the Whigs. If, as the Whigs taught, those who paid the taxes were entitled to a voice in the government, then the manufacturing districts ought to send representatives to Parliament. It seemed monstrous that places like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham had no one in the House of Commons to plead for the needs of their inhabitants. The manufacturer wanted Parliamentary representation because he hoped through Parliament to secure the abolition of the political disabilities of Nonconformists, and to get financial changes made that would make the conditions of trade more profitable. And he felt that it would be better for the country if he and the class he represented could speak freely in Parliament.