in which the East India Company enjoyed their exclusive advantages, the import of tea from China was 29,592,310 lbs. ; in the subsequent year, 1834-5, the first of the open trade, the import was 41,041,843 lbs. ! In Lancashire, however, local causes have operated very powerfully to give an unusual, it is to be hoped not au unnatural or unhealthy, impulse to the cotton manufacture. The sudden rise of several Joint Stock Banks in Manchester, the issue of their own notes, and the other facilities afforded by them, combined with a prosperous season, have recently made money exceedingly plentiful. As was the case also a few years ago, the apparent facility with which fortunes are made in the Manchester cotton trade the still growing demand for manufactures in old markets, and the opening of new ones, have induced the erection of many mills in Manchester. Last year it was asserted, on the authority of Dr. Kay, an Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, that mills would, within two years, be erected, which would require seven thousand horses' power to set them in operation. In order that the reader may be enabled to form some idea of this enormous addition to existing manufactures, it may be stated that, presuming one half of this power to be employed in producing yarn,* there would be an addition to the present consumption of raw cotton of about 2800 bags, weighing about 500 lbs. each, per week, or about 15 per cent. increase on the present sales. In preparing this cotton and spinning it into yarn, 19,600 hands would be required; and, presuming the other moiety of the 7000 horses' power to be employed in afterwards weaving the yarn into cloth, there would be needed for this process 26,250 weavers, making a total addition to the hands employed in the cotton trade, of 45,850 persons, besides mechanics, warehousemen, clerks, &c. &c. For the 3,500 horses' power supposed to be

* No. 40's may be taken as a general average for the quality of the yarn spun.

employed in spinning, there will be required 2,800,000 spindles, which alone will be worth about half a million of money. Of the 19,600 persons working this horsepower, probably 8,400 will be, occupied in the preparatory processes, and will earn, on the average, 10s. per week: of the remaining 11,200 engaged in the spinning, about onefourth will be men earning from 30s. to 40s. a week; the other three-fourths, children, receiving from four to nine shillings. The 26,250 supposed to be employed in weaving will earn, probably, on an average, not less than 10s. a week. Extraordinary and improbable as the extent of this increase may appear, there is reason to believe that the estimate is by no means exaggerated. It is stated on good authority, that in Bolton alone one foundry has orders, to be executed within this year, for a thousand horse-power of steam-engines; and with equal authenticity it is asserted, that in the district of Ashton-under-Lyne the increase in factories will cause a demand for at least 7000 new hands. Nor is the calculated increase in the consumption of cotton so unprecedented as at first it may appear. Last year the weekly consumption was 17,750 bags, whilst in 1812 it was only about 12,000: in one year, namely in 1834-5, the weekly consumption has increased 366 bags, or about 19,000 bags in the year. Cotton, indeed, is become an article of universal use, and new fabrics, in which it forms the sole, or a main ingredient, are daily brought into the market.

CHAPTER III.

Whilst the commerce of Lancashire is thus the means to this county of taking a lead in diffusing comforts over the world, it may safely be asserted that the trade is one which has for its basis the excellent principle of making its influence most beneficially felt at home. It has often indeed been asserted, and ignorant men have taken up the cry without consideration, that the cotton manufacture flourishes at the expense of the health, the comforts, and the bodily sinews of the people; and in the exuberance of their indignation, some philanthropists have placed the Lancashire (and especially the Manchester) manufacturer lower in the scale of humanity than the Egyptian taskmasters, who would compel the people to make bricks without straw. Fortunately the Government of the Country was carried away in 1833 by this outcry, and compelled to nominate a body of travelling Commissioners, whose appointed task it was to visit the district and to inspect the establishments thus maligned, for the purpose of ascertaining the condition, mental, moral and physical, of the operative cotton manufacturers. The result of their enquiry, which had reference to the abridgment of the hours of infant labour, was such as to satisfy all reasonable men that the aspersions thrown upon the British manufacturer were grossly ill-founded; the fact proving to be, that though of itself the confinement in a cotton factory may not always be (as in certain cases it is) conducive to health, the

*The Commissioners made three reports, which have been ably analyzed and reduced to a small compass by a member of the Manchester Statistical Society.

injury so sustained would, in the course of even a long life, be almost imperceptible, were it not that the private habits of the operative (in small part, possibly, induced by the nature of his employment) are frequently gross, generally improvident, and always prejudicial to health.

Evidence without end might be adduced from the immense folios published by the Factory Commissioners, in 1833-4, to shew that the alleged cruelty to younger hands in mills—the imputed immorality to which the unrestrained association of large bodies of men, women and children gives rise—the fearful inroads upon health—thẹ frequent lacerations of limb, and deprivation of life, occasioned by machinery,—are highly exaggerated, not to say pure fabrications. Thus, for example, as to the second of these charges, a girl selected by the Commissioners for examination, who followed her weekly labour in a factory, and on the Sunday taught at a school, being asked whether she thought the boys and girls brought up in mills were 66 more immoral than those in the other various conditions of life," replied that she thought them "much about the same;" whilst other witnesses expressed decidedly their opinion to the same effect. One operative stated that the morality in cotton mills was equally as good "as elsewhere, so far as he was acquainted with society;" adding, (and the remark should be noted by those who decry large towns, and extol the simplicity of rural life) that in country places the females have not that regard to decency in their conversation which females have in Manchester and in other towns, "which he supposes, must be owing to their being better educated in towns than in the country." The state of morality in Lancashire generally may be tested in other ways. It appears that

in the year 1830 the number of illegitimate children born in this county was 2830, or in the proportion of one in thirteen to other births-a very small ratio if

the density and variety of our population be taken into account. In Herefordshire and Salop, purely agricultural counties, the proportion is the same one in thirteen. The evidence of Oswald Milne, Esq., Clerk to the Magistrates, given before the Factory Commissioners, is important. Being asked, "Are factory children often brought before the Magistrates?"-he replied, "Not more so than from other trades, and the greatest part of them that are brought up have been driven to the commission of crime from the neglect of their own parents." Of their character generally, he gives it as his opinion that "they are by no means worse than the rest of the labouring population." This evidence is corroborated by the testimony of several clergymen and other experienced individuals. The total number of witnesses on this branch of the inquiry was fifty-three; forty-seven of whom agreed that factory operatives were not more immoral than others, whilst six were of a different opinion. Again, the alleged cruelty to children, if it exist, reflects no discredit upon the owners or principal directors of factories, since the majority of children in mills are the servants of the adult operatives-piecing, as it is called, for them; so that should any undue severity be exercised, they have not only a ready appeal to the law, which in these districts is always open to their complaints, but they may claim also the protection of their superiors in the mill, or in the last resort they have their natural guardian-the parent. Unfortunately, however, it too frequently happens that this protector fails them; and it is not a little singular that the fact has been more painfully illustrated since the passing of that factory act, which was framed to shield the juvenile operative from oppression, than it had been before. In Manchester very many families depend solely for subsistence on the labour of their young members, the parents being base enough to pass their days in idleness or