the next half century, the steam-engine and the cotton spinning-frame were invented, and in consequence, the population rose in 1800 to 672,565 persons. It might have been supposed that the impulse would now have been pretty well exhausted; but so far from this it seems to have acquired additional vigour, the population of the county having amounted, in 1831, to 1,336,854 persons. This shows that the population of Lancashire is, at present, about eight times as great as at the commencement of last century; and that, notwithstanding its previous increase, it had about doubled itself during the 30 years ending with 1830! No such astonishing increase has occurred any where else in Europe. If it be equalled in any part of the world it is only in Kentucky or Illinois.

It would be wrong to say that Lancashire is indebted for this wonderful progress exclusively to her coal mines. It is the grand result of many conspiring causes; but had all the others existed, and the coal been wanting, how widely different would have been the actual state of things! There is not the shadow of a reason for supposing that, under such circumstances, it would have outstripped Kent or Sussex in the career of industry.

3. The advantageous situation of the country for commerce, and the nature of its soil and climate, have also powerfully contributed to our superiority in manufacturing industry. Owing to the facilities afforded by our insular situation for maintaining an intercourse with all parts of the world, our manufacturers have been able to obtain supplies of foreign raw materials on the easiest terms, and to forward their own products wherever there was a demand for them. Had we occupied a central internal situation in any quarter of the world, our facilities for dealing with foreigners being so much the less, our progress, though our condition had been otherwise in all respects the same, would have been comparatively slow. But being surrounded on all sides by the sea, that is, by the great high-way of nations, we have been able to deal with the most distant as well as with the nearest people, and to profit by all the peculiar capacities of production enjoyed by each. With such advantages on our side it would have been singular had we not shot a-head of most of our competitors in the race of improvement.

Our soil and climate are both highly favourable to industry, and to the production of those qualities that fit a nation to excel in manufactures. Though abundantly fertile, our soil produces few articles suitable for the support of man without laborious exertion. Our climate, too, without being immoderately severe, is sufficiently so to render comfortable lodging and clothing indispensable; and consequently gives rise to wants that are either

wholly unknown, or less sensibly felt in more genial regions. We thus seem to be placed under those very circumstances that Sir William Temple, Mr Hume, and other sagacious enquirers into the progress of society, consider most suitable for the full developement of the industrious capacities. The difficulties naturally incident to our situation serve to call forth and stimulate our powers, at the same time that they are insufficient sensibly to diminish their results.

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II. The moral causes conducive to prosperity in manufactures are so numerous, and would require so many details to set them in an intelligible point of view, that we can only glance at them here. We may, however, observe that that security of property and that freedom of industry, without which manufactures can hardly exist, and can make no considerable progress, been enjoyed in a higher degree in this than in any other European country, not even excepting Holland. Since the accession of the House of Hanover, when the Revolutionary Government may be said to have been firmly established in opinion as well as in fact, we have had, with a few transient exceptions, the most perfect security. We have heard the roaring of the thunder at a distance, and have witnessed the overthrow of kingdoms and dynasties, but the storm has never burst on our own heads. We have enjoyed all the advantages of a free form of Government without any material alloy of popular licentiousness; while the inviolable good faith with which the public engagements have been main. tained, and the respect uniformly manifested by the legislature for the rights of individuals, have impressed on all our institutions respecting property, a character of sacredness and of permanency of the utmost importance. No British capitalist has ever hesitated about engaging in any undertaking, from an idea that the property to be employed in it would not be adequately protected. No such idea ever crossed his mind. The capital vested in a cotton-mill in Manchester has always been reckoned as secure as if it had been laid out on an estate in Devonshire or Wales. Had it been otherwise, our iron mines, our coal mines, our insular situation, and all our other advantages would have been bestowed in vain. Without security they would have been of no more use to us than to the people of Kamschatka. The moment that any circumstance occurs to excite a well-founded suspicion that property, however laid out, is insecure, that moment is our career at an end. Were insecurity to prevail amongst us, our fall would be a thousand times more rapid than our rise; and we should exhibit a mass of pauperism and of misery unex ampled in the annals of mankind.

Though we have not enjoyed perfect freedom of industry,

the natural order of things has been less disturbed in Great Britain, for a very long period, than in any other country. Since the famous act of 1624, for the abolition of monopolies, industry, with some trifling exceptions, has been quite free. We have not

always been allowed to purchase foreign commodities in the cheapest, nor to sell our own in the dearest market; but the most intense competition has always existed among the producers at home. While France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and other countries, have groaned under the weight of feudal and corpora tion privileges, in England the highest offices of the state have been accessible to every deserving individual, and every man has been allowed to exert his own energies in his own way. The powerful incentives thus held out to successful enterprise and industry, on the one hand, and the risk of being outstripped, undersold, or superseded, on the other, have made every power of the mind and the body be brought into the field, and have produced results that must appear all but incredible to persons placed under less exciting circumstances.

The influence of taxation on manufactures ought not, one should think, to have been passed over, without notice, in a work on their philosophy.' It is generally believed to be exceedingly injurious; and those who propose the modification or repeal of protecting duties on foreign imported articles, are always met by statements of the difficulties the domestic producers labour under, in consequence of the heavy pressure of taxation in this country, the high rate of wages, and so forth; and those who anticipate the approaching decline and fall of the English manufacturing system, uniformly lay a great deal of stress on the greater weight of taxation in this country. We doubt, however, whether there be any real ground for these statements and apprehensions. On the contrary, we believe that taxation, though in a few instances it may have been injurious, has hitherto, in this country at least, operated as an incentive to industry; and that the stimulus it has given has powerfully contributed to impel us forward. Like other classes of individuals, manufacturers are actuated by double motives-by the fear of falling, as well as by the desire of rising, in the world. Now, a moderate increase of taxation, without in any degree impairing the latter, gives additional strength to the former principle; and, consequently, occasions a greater degree of exertion, or economy, or both. Were taxation carried to an oppressive height, or were it imposed on erroneous principles, it would operate differently, and instead of producing increased displays of skill and ingenuity, would, most likely, produce dejection and despair. But, so long as taxation is con

fined within reasonable limits, and is judiciously assessed, it undoubtedly operates as a spur to individuals; and the increa sed exertions they make to meet the burden it imposes, usually occasion the production of a greater amount of wealth than is abstracted by the tax. Were any one acquainted with manufactures asked, what has been the immediate cause of the greater part of the inventions and discoveries that every now and then are made, he would certainly say, a rise of wages, or the efforts of the masters to defeat the demands of the workmen for increased wages. Could we suppose that from the era of the discovery of the spinning-frame and the steam-engine, down to the present day, wages had remained stationary, and Strikes and Combinations among the workmen been unknown, we believe we shall not be accused of exaggerating, when we state, that under such circumstances manufactures would not have made half the progress they have done. But an increase of taxation is one of the most prominent causes of an increase of wages; and, independent of this, its direct influence on the manufacturer is precisely similar to an increase of wages. Whether he has to pay an additional sum to his work people, or to the tax-gatherer, is, as respects himself, not very material. In either case he will endeavour to meet the increased burden without allowing it to dimi nish his capital or profits; and will thus be led to contrive and economize in a way, and to a degree, he would not otherwise have thought of.

The system of remitting, or drawing back the duties laid on manufactured articles, when they are about to be exported, hinders them from injuring their sale abroad. And it has yet to be proved that wages, meaning by wages the payments on account of the work done, are really higher here than on the continent.

Taxes ought always, if possible, to be imposed either on the materials used in a manufacture, or on its produce when finished. When their assessment is made, in any degree, to depend on the processes followed in the manufacture, and still more, when they interfere with and regulate these processes, they can hardly fail of being highly injurious. In such cases they fetter the manufacturer, bind him to a routine system, and frequently prevent him from adopting those devices by which, had the duty been differently assessed, he might have more than defrayed it. Indeed, we feel quite satisfied, that those who investigate the history of taxation will find, that nine-tenths of its injurious influence has resulted, not from its having been oppressive in its amount, but from the vicious mode in which it has been assessed, -from its inequality and interference with the processes and de

tails of industry. We certainly have suffered less from this interference than any other country; but the history of the glass and malt duties, and of some others, shows that we have not altogether escaped its injurious influence, though, luckily, it has not affected any great department of industry.

These, with the intelligence so widely diffused, and the manly adventurous spirit inspired by our free institutions, seem to be the main causes of our manufacturing prosperity. It is difficult, in treating of these causes, not to lay an undue stress on some of them to the neglect of others. But our eminence in manufactures is not really the effect of any one in particular, or of a few, but of the whole combined; and till we lose some of these advantages, or other nations come much more nearly to a level with us in these respects than they have hitherto done, our ascendency, as a manufacturing and commercial people, seems to be pretty well secured.

III. The powerful influence of manufactures in increasing the population and wealth of the nation, is too certain and obvious to admit of doubt. They not only afford direct subsistence, and the means of attaining to affluence, to an immense number of individuals; but they act powerfully and beneficially on the agricultural and other classes; supplying them with an infinite variety of useful and necessary accommodations, at a low price, at the same time that they create an almost boundless market for their peculiar products. A flourishing agriculture depends, in fact, on flourishing manufactures; and it would be as unreasonable to expect that the extraordinary extension and improvement of agriculture we have witnessed in this country since 1770, should have taken place without the constantly increasing demand of the manufacturers, as it would be to suppose that our crops should come to maturity without the genial influences of the

sun and showers.

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But, however beneficial to the public, it has been said that these advantages are not obtained except at a heavy cost. dren, that is young persons between the ages of nine and fourteen years, as well as adults, are largely employed in factories; and while the health and morals of the latter are said to suffer severely, the former have been described as being stunted in their growth, and rendered decrepit and miserable for life, by the prolonged confinement, drudgery, and ill treatment to which they are exposed. These representations of the ruinous effects of what has been called white slavery, after being circulated in speeches, tracts, petitions, and dissertations, were at length embodied in Mr Sadler's famous Factory Report, which, we believe, contains