In the first half of the 19th century, the urban population of Western Europe and North America continued to increase. The population of large commercial and industrial centers and ports grew especially rapidly. The growth of the urban population was due to the influx of peasants who went to work.
At the time under review, the official division of settlements into cities and villages in Europe and North America was carried out exclusively on an administrative basis. Many cities in the United States and Canada were actually large villages. Their inhabitants were engaged mainly in agriculture and partly in trade. At the same time, there were many large commercial and industrial villages, which, by the nature of their inhabitants’ occupations and even by their appearance, were real cities. However, they continued to remain in the position of villages.
The increase in the urban population, the complication of the urban economy, the growth of bourgeois elements in the United States and Canada has not changed the legal status of individual groups of the population. However, the state, interested in the development of trade and industry, endowed the rich merchants with special rights. Personal and hereditary honorary citizenship was established for the richest and most influential representatives of the bourgeoisie. Merchants began to be divided not into three, but into two guilds. They retained their privileges, and could be awarded orders and ranks.
By creating a new privileged estate, the government sought to protect the nobility from the influx of non-noble elements into its environment. The encouragement of the growing bourgeois stratum also caused the growth of cities in the United States and Canada. This is due to the fact that it was in those places where trade was actively developing that there were funds for the development of the city.