Pessimism reigns, and for good reason. Inner cities are war zones. Pornography is manufactured unchecked. Blacks and whites stare at each other across the O. J. Simpson courtroom, each unable to fathom what the other is thinking. The prison population is exploding. The poor are getting poorer. The most helpless and powerless are aborted not just by the thousands but by the millions.

Depending on one's political views, the enemy is on the left-radicals ensconced in the universities and the nation's capitol. Or the enemy is on the right-the business class, sitting in plush offices of multinational corporations. In any case, despair is spreading: our culture is withering before our eyes, so the feeling goes, and there's not a whole lot we can do about it. Might as well go fishing.

In the early 1800s, Britain was a superpower rolling in wealth. Yet impersonal forces-specifically the Industrial Revolution and the international slave trade-conspired to destroy lives. The masses of England seemed ...

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