It's clear, though, that the transition to an industrial, manufacturing economy required more people to labor at this manufacture. In a manufacturing economy, a person's productive labor needs to produce more than they need to keep life going. This surplus production is what produces profits for the owners of the manufacture. This surplus economy not only makes population growth possible, it makes it desirable. While it's hard to pinpoint a beginning to the Industrial Revolution, historians generally agree that it basically originated in England, both in a series of technological and social innovations.
Historians propose a number of reasons.
While this drove peasants off the land, it also increased agricultural production and increased the urban population of England, since the only place displaced peasants had to go were the cities. Because of the strong role of Parliament in English government and the incredible influence of capitalists and mercantilists, social values had also been steadily shifting in England. In continental Europe, the aristocracy represented the fullest embodiment of social values. They believed that they were born with higher virtues than the common people, who, because of their birth would never attain these virtues to the same level. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations proposed that the only legitimate goal of national government and human activity is the steady increase in the overall wealth of the nation.