A population increase has in all situations placed a strain on supporting industries and services throughout the world and it was no different in Britain. The growing population created demand for raw materials, manufactured goods and services that industry had to supply.
Agriculture was the first area that was massively reformed in order to provide for the larger population. It was also dominated the current economy. An increase in the scientific understanding of agriculture led to more efficient working practices that fully utilised the land available to the farmers. Turnips and clover stopped the need for a third of the land to sit as fallow land. Selective breeding was understood for the first time and together with enclosure increased the productivity of livestock farmers.
The industrial revolution is widely regarded to have begun in the 1750's and started to gather momentum by the 1780's. The industrial revolution was most marked in the textile industry with production centralised from single loom cottages to mass loam steam and water powered mills. With this production rose to meet the demands the population was placing upon the manufacturing sector. But the simple town market, the descendants of which can still be seen in St.ives, Huntingdon and Ramsey on a weekly basis, remained the centre of trade.
By the mid 1780's the canal infrastructure in Britain was at its peaks. The motorways of Britain that carried all of the goods need for the growing centres of industry although most of Britain still relied on the horse drawn carriage. It would be another 50 years though until the slow speed of the canals was to be overcome with the beginning of the railways.
Although the 1780's were at time of opportunity for the country as a whole there were many areas that seemed very antiquated. These areas I view as a challenge that society faced. The first of these was the electoral system.
The system was very antiquated and was based around a country that no longer existed with the radical change. For example Manchester, a new industrial hub with tens of thousands of inhabitants didn't have a single MP whereas Cornwall had more than a dozen. Rotten boroughs were common. Former important centres in earlier years that had diminished and become boroughs with only a dozen or so eligible voters, all of which could be manipulated and bribed. Britain and Ireland were over represented with Wales and Scotland being severely and deliberately under represented.
Voting was done in public, often to a politically biased collecting officer. Candidates used a collection of techniques such as bribery, manipulation and threats to guarantee votes. Practically nobody could vote, in fact the voting role made up barely 5% of the population. Votes were only open to males with land worth a value of 40 shillings. Governments were in power for 7 years which must have seemed like an eternity in age of such speedy developments. It wasn't until the very late 1780's and the French revolution that parliament became worried about the vast number of people who were dissatisfied with the electoral system. It was only at this point did the scale of the challenge become apparent to all of those in positions of power.
Another challenge, depending at which point in the pyramid you were, facing Britain in the 1780's was the class system. Such a rigid class system placed power with the landed class and royalty. Movement between classes, a possible rise, was unheard off. Opportunities arose very much within the class you were in, the 80-90% who were in the lower class would not become doctors, and they were very much condemned to a life in a poorly paid manufacturing job. It was only with electoral reform to all males that this great majority's voice could possible be heard without something as drastic as revolution. This therefore made electoral reform a rather hot topic.
In a conclusion I would say that great forces were working within Britain to change the country in a drastic fashion. But some areas became challenges to be tackled due to their slow reform in a country with sweeping peaceful 'revolution' in certain areas. It was important that these important social organs, such as democracy and government, were not allowed to fall behind or a Britain may find itself in a similar situation to France or America.