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The second half of the 18th century saw a turning point in the life of the country which, more or less, coincided with the death of George 2 and the accession to the throne of George 3 in 1760. George 3 reigned from 1760 till 1820, but it was above all in the first forty of his regain that new social, political and economic events contributed to the slow decline of the classical values and to the awakening of romantic ideals. These events gave life to a period of transition , I which people had to adapt themselves to fast-growing changes. The 2 main political events of the age were the American and the French Revolution which , thought not effecting the way of living in the island. Eventually had their part in developing a new awareness of men is rights. The industrial Revolution, as it was called later, transformed England from an agricultural into an industrial country. Agriculture had already been radically changed by the Enclosure Acts. That made a lot of poor people who lived in the country on agriculture go to town looking for a job in the new industries. Consequently the enclosure acts forced many people living in the country to leave their big houses in contact with nature to go to little horrible houses of the town that were the called slums. In the last years of the 18th century Watt patented his steam engine, and the were old of other invention. These inventions eventually, in the next fifty years, destroyed the old domestic weaving and spinning systems and introduced the methods of factory production. The employment of steam power made the use of coal necessary, and manufacture gravitated towards the coal and iron fields in Yorkshire, Lancashire, South Wales; consequently workers migrated with their families to the new manufactory district. The new industrial towns arose near river courses such as(come per ex) Manchester and Liverpool. The new born industries needed the water of the rivers for different purposes for example to make energy thanks to power of the steam(vapour) or to create the water frame in order to(allo scopo di) exploit water to make textiles(= tessuti). Water furthermore was necessary in very field al the rubbish. Transport became easier with the new railways, roads and canals; the volume of exports quickly rose, the population of England increased by millions, and wealth grew fast for the upper and middle classes. Immigration into the new industrial districts brought many evils in the first period, i.e. overpopulation and lack of the most elementary principles of sanitation in factories and houses, which were overcrowded slums Men, women and even children worked in factories up to 15/16 hours a day, insufficiently paid, to the limits of physical endurance. Too much work the loss of green opens spaces and the passage to slums and industrial led to depression many country people who, in despair turned to alcohol.
