victory or the gains of conquest. Nor were the economic results of the war promising or satisfactory. A boundless field was, certainly, open for purposes of colonisation and investment. The vast prairies of America offered scope enough for the surplus energies and active forces of a country whose boundaries nature has permanently fixed, and whose resources were but imperfectly known or developed; and many there were ready to neglect their possessions at home for a portion of wilderness beyond the Atlantic. But England was not overcrowded with people; 2 she had not much capital to spare for investment in regions so distant; and, whatever might be the prospect of future and permanent advantage, it was more than counterbalanced by the difficulty and expense of defending the extensive territories now added to the Empire.3 Though, politically, England had by this time, and especially after the success of the Seven Years' War, become a first power in Europe, economically she had as yet acquired no absolute supremacy. Her industries had accomplished none of their prodigies. Manchester was not glorying in her tall and ever-smoking chimneys. An inland town of no pretensions for beauty, and at some distance from the sea, she consumed but small quantities of cotton to work into fustians, vermilions, and dimities. To London her manufacturers went for the raw material from Cyprus and Smyrna, and thither they returned their goods for exportation. Liverpool had scarcely any of her glorious docks; the stately barks from America had not yet found their way to her harbour. She had but an insignificant trade, a large portion of which consisted in the wretched traffic of slaves from Africa to the West Indies. Alas that it was so profitable a trade! Leeds and Bradford were not very conspicuous either for trade or manufacture. Even London, the only place of real importance in the kingdom, which then monopolised a large portion of the foreign trade of the country,5 4 * In 1750, as computed from the registers of baptisms, burials, and marriages, the population of England was stated as 6,517,000. In 1763 the population would probably have reached 7,000,000.-Preface to Census Enumeration, Abstract, for 1841. The acquisitions included Canada West, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent, and Tobago. In 1773 the population of Liverpool was ascertained to be 34,000. She possessed only three floating docks, a tolerably-sized basin, and three graving docks. The gross receipt of customs in 1775 was 274,000l.; and in 1775 eightyone ships of 9,200 tons were cleared from Liverpool for the African or Slave Trade. In 1775 there was only one letter-carrier for all Liverpool, and the mail-bags were carried in and out of the town on horseback. 5 London was early a large emporium of trade. William Fitz-Stephens, giving an account of it in the time of Henry II., said :— Arabia's gold, Sabez' spice and incense; had not a tithe of the shipping and commerce which now enrich the banks of the Thames. In size she was little more than what was left by the Romans-the city within the walls.' Her population was probably half a million only. There was then but one bridge connecting London and Southwark. The Bank of England was but a small building flanked by a church. The Royal Exchange was one rebuilt after the destruction of that built by Sir Thomas Gresham, which was again destroyed by fire in 1838. Lloyd's was still a coffee-house at the corner of Abchurch Lane. There was no Stock Exchange, and not a single dock. The port was blocked up by a fleet of merchantmen, and the quays heaped with bales, boxes, bags, and barrels in the greatest possible confusion. Scarcely one, indeed, of the great institutions and buildings which constitute modern London was in existence one hundred years ago. What England possessed then, as she does now, was a geographical situation the most favourable for purposes of maritime commerce, in close proximity to the continent of Europe, and bordering on the ocean, the great open highway to America; mineral riches of enormous value; and, above all, a people of sturdy race, the Anglo-Saxon, distinguished for an innate sentiment of independence and right, for energy of character and aptitude for work, for capacity for material conquests, and courage and tact as colonisers and discoverers. With advantages such as these, can we wonder that England succeeded, with a rapidity almost unexampled in history, in acquiring for herself a position of the highest eminence in commerce and navigation? Of all British industries, the cotton was as yet probably the • The first stone of the new building in Threadneedle Street was laid on August 3, 1732, and business was first transacted there on June 5, 1734. The business of stockbrokers and of jobbers in the public funds was transacted in the Rotunda at the Bank of England and at rooms in the Stock Exchange Coffee House in Threadneedle Street. The first stone of the new building in Capel Court was laid in May 1801, and the new Stock Exchange was opened in March 1802, with a list of about 500 subscribers. * Cotton is certainly not a new article. All warm climates within a limited zone, especially countries in the vicinities of the sea, and with a soil dry and sandy, produce cotton. From time immemorial cotton has been grown in Hindustan, China, Persia, Egypt, Candia, and Sicily, and, when South America was discovered, the natives were found growing cotton. The Patagonians bound their hair with cotton threads, and in Mexico the people wore cotton clothing of remarkable beauty. Yet, as it has been well said, cotton could only become an article of trade to those countries which were able by their industries to manufacture it into a beautiful and durable material at moderate prices. In ancient times, probably as early as the eighth century, India furnished Europe with her muslin, so called from Musul in Mesopotamia. The Assyrians brought cotton manufactures into Europe, together with their silks from China, their carpets from India, and their spices from the East. But, with all this, up to and during the Middle Ages, cotton never seemed to have constituted the ordinary clothing of the people. In England the consumption of cotton was confined to very small quantities, principally used for candle-wicks, and nearly the whole of the cotton imported came from the Continent. Though as far back as 1328 the Flemings, settling in Manchester, laid the basis of the British least conspicuous. Cotton did not enter into the common dress of the people. It was too dear for general use. But what marvellous transformation occurred in the use of that textile, the result of the big thoughts and extraordinary ingenuity of a few mechanicians, the far-famed Lewis Paul, Lawrence Earnshaw, Hargreaves, Arkwright,10 Crompton, and Peel! How much each of these individually contributed towards the full development of the cotton machinery it would be difficult to say. The law of continuity, or rather of gradual progress,' said Lord Brougham, 'governs all human approaches towards perfection. The limited nature of man's faculties precludes the possibility of his ever reaching at once the utmost excellence of which they are capable. Survey the whole circle of the sciences, and trace the history of our progress in each, you will find this to be the universal rule.' 12 Think not that Black and Priestley, Bacon and Adam Smith, Cuvier and Watt, were respectively the unaided discoverers of the theory of latent heat and aeriform fluids, of the inductive system and economic science, of fossil osteology and the power of steam. Even Newton, though far in advance of all others in mathematical and experimental science, was preceded by Cavalleri, Roberval, Fermat, and Shooten, who came as near as possible to the discovery of the differential calculus. Be it as it may, whatever be the share respectively taken by the great builders of the cotton manufacture, it is to the inventors of the spinning-jenny and the carding-machine, and to the makers of the water-frame and the mule, that we are indebted for the fact that cotton-spinning almost in a moment, as by magic, ceased to be a domestic manufacture, and became almost entirely the product of machinery. To them it is that we owe the factory system with its attendant advantageseconomy of power, division of labour, and concentration of skill and superintendence; and to them, too, we are beholden for that woollen manufacture in what was called Manchester Cotton,' it was not till the middle of the seventeenth century that cotton, wool, fustians, dimities, and other articles began to be exported from this country to the Continent. As late as the accession of George III. no fabric consisting entirely of cotton was made, and it was only by the operation of those wonderful inventions which suddenly performed so great a revolution, that cotton acquired the present prominent position. Lewis Paul's patent for a new-invented machine for the better opening and dressing of wool is dated May 26, 1733;. for the new machine for the spinning of wool and cotton into thread, yarn, or worsted, June 24, 1748; for carding of wool and cotton, August 30, 1758; and for a new-invented machine for the spinning of wool and cotton, June 29, 1758. 10 Arkwright's patents for a spinning machine, July 3, 1769; for spinning, drawing, and twisting cotton, June 12, 1770; for machinery for the preparation of fibrous materials for spinning, December 16, 1775. Robert Peel's patent for a method of dressing, carding, slubbing, roving, and spinning cotton was dated December 16, 1775. 12 Brougham's address on the opening of the Newton Monument at Grantham, extraordinary change in the fortunes of Lancashire, which thenceforth threw aside her agricultural garb and almost pastoral simplicity to assume the more active and stirring occupations of industry and manufactures. The principal actors in this great revolution were humble operatives, working alone without status or patronage, scarcely conscious themselves of the value of a work which would place their names in the very forefront of the industrial progress of Britain. Alas that they should have been so ill-requited for the magnificent boon they were conferring on the nation and on the world! But it has always been so with the pioneers of progress, the glorious martyrs of science. As soon as it became known that a machine was invented which would work more expeditiously, and produce goods more economically, than any human hands could ever achieve, extreme jealousy was excited among the workers against such an innovation. The house of Kay was entered into, and every machine it contained was knocked to pieces. The Blackburn spinners and weavers were not content till they destroyed the Jenny13 and all its belongings, and drove Hargreaves himself from his home. Arkwright was compelled to resort to all manner of stratagems to evade pursuit. And poor Crompton, more than once, was compelled to take his mule to pieces, and hide its various parts in a garret. But should we be surprised at the inability of working-men one hundred years ago to apprehend the relation of machinery to production and wages, when so many of much higher grade in society are utterly ignorant on the subject this very day? It all arises, however, from want of thought. The weavers of the last century, and those who obstructed the introduction of machinery at a later time, did not fully realise, that whatever superiority we possess over other animals, arises precisely from this, that we are able to economise human labour by the use of mechanical contrivances. Can we live without using tools or implements of some sort? Is it not the fact, that we have fewer natural means of appropriating to our own wants objects which nature offers to us than other animals possess? Thankful we should be if, by artificial helps, quite as powerful as any animal Spinning by rollers was first tried in Birmingham. In 1700, in a small building near Sutton Coldfield, about six miles from Birmingham, the first thread of cotton was spun, by means which Arkwright subsequently perfected, and from the use of which our vast cotton trade has sprung. This first thread of cotton, spun without the aid of human fingers,' was produced by an arrangement of rollers in a model, about two feet square, without a single witness to the work, the inventor, to use his own words, being all the time in a pleasing but trembling suspense.' In 1741 the invention had made further progress, and some yarn was spun by an engine turned by two asses walking round an axis in a large warehouse near the Well, in the Upper Priory, at Birmingham, some of the thread being still extant and endorsed with the details by John Wyatt himself. The cotton manufacture, or rather the spinning of cotton by rollers, was carried on in Birmingham till nearly the close of the last century. (See Industrial History of Birmingham, by Samuel Timmins.) least conspicuous. Cotton did not enter into the common dress of the people. It was too dear for general use. But what marvellous transformation occurred in the use of that textile, the result of the big thoughts and extraordinary ingenuity of a few mechanicians, the far-famed Lewis Paul, Lawrence Earnshaw, Hargreaves, Arkwright,10 Crompton, and Peel! How much each of these individually contributed towards the full development of the cotton machinery it would be difficult to say. The law of continuity, or rather of gradual progress,' said Lord Brougham, 'governs all human approaches towards perfection. The limited nature of man's faculties precludes the possibility of his ever reaching at once the utmost excellence of which they are capable. Survey the whole circle of the sciences, and trace the history of our progress in each, you will find this to be the universal rule.' 12 Think not that Black and Priestley, Bacon and Adam Smith, Cuvier and Watt, were respectively the unaided discoverers of the theory of latent heat and aeriform fluids, of the inductive system and economic science, of fossil osteology and the power of steam. Even Newton, though far in advance of all others in mathematical and experimental science, was preceded by Cavalleri, Roberval, Fermat, and Shooten, who came as near as possible to the discovery of the differential calculus. Be it as it may, whatever be the share respectively taken by the great builders of the cotton manufacture, it is to the inventors of the spinning-jenny and the carding-machine, and to the makers of the water-frame and the mule, that we are indebted for the fact that cotton-spinning almost in a moment, as by magic, ceased to be a domestic manufacture, and became almost entirely the product of machinery. To them it is that we owe the factory system with its attendant advantageseconomy of power, division of labour, and concentration of skill and superintendence; and to them, too, we are beholden for that 6 woollen manufacture in what was called Manchester Cotton,' it was not till the middle of the seventeenth century that cotton, wool, fustians, dimities, and other articles began to be exported from this country to the Continent. As late as the accession of George III. no fabric consisting entirely of cotton was made, and it was only by the operation of those wonderful inventions which suddenly performed so great a revolution, that cotton acquired the present prominent position. 9 Lewis Paul's patent for a new-invented machine for the better opening and dressing of wool is dated May 26, 1733; for the new machine for the spinning of wool and cotton into thread, yarn, or worsted, June 24, 1748; for carding of wool and cotton, August 30, 1758; and for a new-invented machine for the spinning of wool and cotton, June 29, 1758. 10 Arkwright's patents for a spinning machine, July 3, 1769; for spinning, drawing, and twisting cotton, June 12, 1770; for machinery for the preparation of fibrous materials for spinning, December 16, 1775. 11 Robert Peel's patent for a method of dressing, carding, slubbing, roving, and spinning cotton was dated December 16, 1775. 12 Brougham's address on the opening of the Newton Monument at Grantham, |