motive machinery, which seems destined to supersede them.

These facilities, joined with a temperate climate, a hardy and intelligent race of men, a convenient insular position, and, above all, a government founded deep in the principles of freedom, and possessed of power to protect property, and wisdom to direct the energies, and call forth the resources of the people, form, altogether, a combination which renders the extraordinary commercial and manufacturing prosperity of Britain, nothing more than the natural result of the circumstances in which it has pleased an indulgent Providence to place her.

66

At what time cotton was first introduced into England, as an article of manufacture, is uncertain. The woollen and silk manufactures, especially the former, which existed at a very early date, had preceded it, and had prepared machinery which only required to be transferred to this new material. It is remarkable, that the term cottons," had for centuries been applied to a particular kind of woollen fabric, before the produce of the cotton plant was manufactured in this country. The name had been transferred from imported cotton goods, which were imitated by the English weavers; and "Manchester cottons" had become famous, long before the raw material was known in Britain.

The first mention of true cotton manufacture is so late as the year 1641, when it is spoken of as already established in Manchester; but it had probably been gradually growing in private, and it is conjectured that the art was originally brought from the Low Countries in 1585, by the Flemish refugees, who fled from the persecutions of the Duke of Parma and the Spanish government.

At the commencement of the manufacture, the capital employed in it was small, and the progress was slow, but its extent was constantly increasing. In 1727, De Foe speaks of Manchester, as having almost doubled its population, and as containing, inclusive of all its suburbs, nearly fifty thousand inhabitants; and he adds, "The grand manufacture which has so much raised this town, is that of cotton in all its varieties, which, like all other manufac

tures, is ty years.

very

much increased within the last thirty or for

6

In 1766, Postlethwayt, the author of the Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce,' estimated the annual value of cottons, made at Manchester, Bolton, and the neighborhood, at £600,000. The same author publishes an official return, by which it appears, that in 1749, somewhat upwards of a million and a half pounds of cotton wool were imported into Britain, and that three hundred and thirty thousand pounds were exported after being manufactured, while the remainder (one million three hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds) were retained for home consumption. Compare this with the present imports and exports, as given officially, as follows:

Cotton wool, imported in 1833, 303,726,199 lbs.

British cotton manufactures, exported in 1833, (real or declared value,) £18,486,400.

This amazing prosperity has been mainly owing to improved machinery, to which I shall presently advert; but it is also owing partly to an increased predilection for cotton goods, and increased habits of luxury in dress. In the year 1701, when the exportation of cotton goods did not exceed £23,000,-which appears to have been above the average for the next forty years, the exportation of woollen goods amounted to two millions, forming above a fourth of the whole export trade of the kingdom. So great has been the change in the relative proportion of these manufactures, that whilst the woollen exports have increased only to six millions and a half, the cotton exports have reached, as has been seen, to the amazing value of eighteen millions and a half. The woollen manufacture has, indeed, continued to extend, but its rate of increase bears no proportion to that of the cotton manufacture.

If to the value of the exported goods, we add that of those consumed in the country, we shall acquire a still juster view of this manufacture, and our admiration will

* De Foe's Tour, vol. iii. p. 219.

be increased. Mr. Huskisson stated in the House of Commons, in 1824, that the real value of cotton goods. consumed at home within the preceding year, amounted to £32,000,000 sterling. Of these thirty-two millions worth of goods, not more than six millions were invested in the raw material; and the remaining twenty-six millions went to the profits of the capitalist, and the income of the persons employed in the manufacture, after making various deductions for machinery, and for the amount of capital. Mr. Baines justly observes, that the rapid increase of the cotton manufacture mocks all that the most romantic imagination could have previously conceived possible, under any circumstances.

EIGHTH WEEK-TUESDAY.

CLOTHING. THE COTTON MANUFACTURE-ITS BRITISH HISTORY CONTINUED IMPROVEMENT OF MACHINERY.

THE Cotton manufacture, though continually increasing in England, seemed destined soon to receive a check from a cause, which no means then in existence could counteract. None but strong goods, such as fustians and dimities, were made in England, so late as the middle of the last century, and for these, the demand must always have been limited. Yet the demand exceeded the supply, and the modes of manufacture were such as greatly to impede the increase of the production. The weaver was continually pressing upon the spinner. The processes of spinning and weaving were generally performed in the same cottage, but the weaver's own family could not supply him with a sufficient quantity of weft, and he had to collect it with much pains from neighboring spinsters. Thus his time was wasted, and he was often subjected to high demands for an article, on which, as the demand exceeded the supply, the seller could put his own price. A high and sustained price of yarn would indeed have attracted new hands to the employment, but such high

price would itself have tended to keep down the rising manufacture, by making the goods too costly, in comparison with other articles of clothing.

This difficulty was likely to be further aggravated by the invention of the flying shuttle, one of the first British improvements in the process of weaving. This simple contrivance was a great saving of time and exertion to the weaver, and enabled one man to weave the widest cloth, which had before required the united exertions of two persons.

The art of spinning, as practised at the time I am now speaking of, was a very slow process. The only machine then made use of was that of the one-thread wheel, which may still be seen to occupy the chimney-corner of the thrifty housewife; a machine much superior, indeed, to the clumsy teak-wood wheel used in India, but still a very imperfect piece of mechanism. Genius stepped in to remove the difficulty, and gave wings, as Mr. Baines emphatically expresses it, to a manufacture which had been creeping on the earth. A mechanical contrivance was invented, by which twenty, fifty, a hundred, or even a thousand threads, could be spun at once by a single pair of hands!

Into the details of this invention, and of the various steps by which it was perfected, till it gave rise to that astonishing Factory System, by which Britain has been rendered the manufacturing emporium of the world, I must not enter. Yet it is too intimately connected with our subject, and exhibits, in too interesting and striking a light, the progressive developement of human ingenuity, as connected with the profound arrangements of Creative wisdom, to be passed over altogether in silence.

The want to which I have alluded, as regarded the spinning art, seems, about the time of which I now speak, to have called forth the inventive powers of several ingenious men ;* but those to whom the world is

* We learn from the Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., that in 1783, that Society had in its repositories models of the following spinning machines :-" A spinning-wheel, by Mr. John Webb, invented 1761; a spinning-wheel, by Mr. Thomas

indebted for the inventions, the principle of which has been so successfully reduced to practice, are James Hargreaves, a weaver of Standhill, near Blackburn, who produced the spinning-jenny; John Wyatt and Lewis Paul, manufacturers of Birmingham, who gave rise to the art of spinning by rollers; Richard Arkwright, (afterwards Sir Richard,) a native of Preston, bred to the business of hair-dressing, whose inventive genius and unrivalled sagacity enabled him to arrange a complete series of machinery of the most admirable construction; and Samuel Crompton, a weaver, near Bolton, who combined the machines of Arkwright and Hargreaves, and thus took a new step towards the perfection of manufacturing mechanism.

Many improvements have been made by the successors of these ingenious men, but to them seems due the praise of those original inventions in mechanism, to which is owing the prosperity of British manufactures. To these must be added the no less extraordinary inventions connected with the application of steam as a moving power, which are of too great importance not to require a separate consideration. Mr. Baines thus forcibly sums up his detailed account of these wonderful improvements.

"Little more than sixty years since, every thread used in the manufacture of cotton, wool, worsted, and flax, throughout the world, was spun singly by the fingers of the spinner, with the aid of that classical instrument, the domestic spinning-wheel. In 1767, an eight-handed spinster sprung from the genius of Hargreaves; and the jenny, with still increasing powers, made its way into common use, in spite of all opposition, Two years afterwards, the more wonderful invention of Wyatt, which claims a much earlier origin, but had disappeared, like a river which sinks into a subterraneous channel, and now rose again under the fortunate star of Arkwright, claimed yet higher admiration, as founded on principles of more

Perrin, 1761; a horizontal spinning-wheel, by Mr. William Harrison, 1764; a spinning-wheel, by Mr. Perrin, 1765; a spinning-wheel, by Mr. Garrat, 1766; a spinning-wheel, by Mr. Garrat, 1767.”—Vol. i. pp. 314, 315.