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the common benefit of the great family of mankind, were these practical triumphs given.

For the first five years of the eighteenth century, the average consumption of cotton wool was little more than one million pounds weight per annum; and during this period the workpeople employed would not exceed, of all ages and classes, more than 25,000; but at the close of that century the consumption had increased to 52,000,000 of pounds, and the workers, in every department of the trade, to upwards of 125,000,-a most important and varied industry having thus arisen. Some specimens of cotton are now before us, and among them will be found a sample of as good and fine cotton as probably has been ever grown in any country; but which owes its origin to no tropical climate, having been produced within the walls of a Manchester spinning factory. These specimens are arranged according to the length of their fibres, or staples, and to their respective merits and value.

Few articles of manufacture are more economically used than cotton, or possess a more general application. Its finest qualities, of the Sea Island class, are worked into lace and muslin of the most beautiful texture; other qualities, Egyptian, New Orleans, and Boweds, are made into cambrics and calicoes for printing, into shirtings, sheetings, and fustians; and, mixed with the better kinds of waste, into bedcovers and heavy fabrics; but East India cotton is rarely used alone, except for the lowest purposes, because of its general inferiority, and it is commonly disposed of in adulteration. After the spinner and manufacturer have wrought all the fibres of cotton which they can control into yarn and cloth, there remains a portion of waste inconvertible into those products; and this waste has long been one of the valuable materials very extensively used by the paper-maker, to be ultimately applied to literary purposes. From this waste cotton excellent paper

for the letterpress printer is obtained; and it may be the means of conveying instruction to us through our periodicals, from Dickens's "Household Words" to the monitions of the "Times," and from the child's Primer to the profound philosophy of our highest schools. Hence, we are indebted to cotton for covering or clothing for the material man, whilst its very refuse, purged and re-manipulated, contributes to his intellectual teaching and enjoyment.

With the opening of the nineteenth century important improvements in machinery continued to be effected, and many auxiliary sources of extending the cotton trade were discovered, the most prominent of which was the splendid mechanical contribution of Mr. Heathcoat, formerly of Loughborough, and now the member for Tiverton, who invented the lacemaking machine, and patented it, in 1809. Without the invention of the spinning-mule, the lace trade, as now existing in its cotton department, could not have been established; for the finest and most delicate of cotton yarns are indispensable to the production of beautiful lace fabrics. The metropolis of the manufacture of lace is Nottingham; but at Tiverton has been established Mr. Heathcoat's large concern, and it is an industry now pursued in many other places. Of the multifarious and various phases assumed by cotton, no change in the manufactured fabric is more beautiful and serviceable than that produced by the calico-printer; and, doubtless, his art has ministered to the general industry; for it is estimated that one seventh of all the cotton spun and manufactured is devoted to the printing branch of trade. Calico printing was established in London by Mauvillion, a Frenchman, at the latter end of the seventeenth century; the use of the copperplate being afterwards introduced there by Nixon;t and

The late Mr. Samuel Cartledge, of Nottingham, first introduced cotton thread to the lace manufacturer.

+Nixon, of Merton Abbey, upon whose tomb is recorded his invention.

in Lancashire, about the middle of the last. To the Arbuthnots, Kilburns, Peels, Liddiards, Thompsons, Forts, Koechlins, Hartmans, Claytons, Hargreaveses, Greenways, Menteiths, Hoyles, Schwabes, Potters, and many others, the extent of this trade is much indebted, as also to both dyers and bleachers. Mixed fabrics have always been produced by woollen, cotton, linen, and silk manufacturers. In Bradford, in Yorkshire, there is an extensive trade carried on by cottonyarn and thread warps being used in combination with worsted shoot, by which very beautiful goods of the orleans, merino, and coburg class are made. Cotton is extensively blended with silk in many useful fabrics. Very excellent sheeting is made from linen and cotton yarn, and the goods so produced are known as "Union cloths." These mixed goods are not manufactured for mere cheapening purposes, but to afford the consumer a great variety of useful fabrics from which to select, according to the required object to be attained. Therefore, cotton is an article of extensive consumption in these mixed goods, and here are important reasons why that raw material should be amply supplied.

To the present moment the cotton trade has had an onward career, and its importance will be proved by its extent and position in the social system of the United Kingdom. It is true, that its existence has been often menaced, but it has uniformly recovered its elasticity, and its rebounds have always carried it still beyond its previous extent. Under the restrictive policy of this country, premature decay seemed to await it, and it suffered great depressions and depreciations. Frequently were its artisans compelled to find homes in poor-houses, emigrate, for lack of employment; and to the suicidal course then pursued, much of the existing foreign competition, in every branch of it, is now owing: indeed, prosecution, as fatal as that pursued by the Duke of Alva, though existing under more specious

or to

names and pretexts, threatened to exterminate or to contract within the narrowest possible limits this astonishing industry. At the commencement of the eighteenth century, the United Kingdom had no serions competition in this branch of business in any foreign country; its originators, the inventors of its machinery and of its great moving power, had all been found at home in the ranks of men of science and usefulness; and therefore, well might this trade have been claimed for our country's own. Improvements and progress cannot, however, nor should they be bound to one spot or country; for it is evidently wiser to pursue the course that nature and justice dictate, than to force any new industry by privations and legislative restrictions into artificial channels, which are rarely either permanent or prosperous. Had our ports been kept open to the world, our trade would have been kept longer unassailed; for whilst our insulated position, minerals, inventions, increasing population, and our untiring energy and industry, have eminently qualified us to be a manufacturing and mercantile people, we might, to a greater extent, have given our products of skill and labour in exchange for the productions that the natural advantages of every country could best send

hither in payment for our exports, had they been permitted. Happily, though lately, the old fiscal system of this country has been abandoned, having brought abundance and comforts to the industrious classes, who now enjoy prosperity beyond all precedent; and now the race will be free to all. But the legacy of competition is left to this country.

America and France consume more than half as much cotton wool as does this country; and Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Switzerland, consume a quantity nearly equal to the other half; hence there is now a balancing and equalisation of consumption between the originating country of the modern cotton trade, and the continent of Europe and the United States

of America; this country consuming 32,000 bags of cotton weekly, against the same quantity being spun and manufactured in the other parts of Europe and in America.

During the year 1851, the consumption of cotton wool in the United Kingdom was upwards of 760 millions of pounds weight, or nearly 700 times the quantity consumed by the domestic trade of a century and a half previously. The actual workers in all departments of its manufacture are now upwards of a million and a quarter; but including their families, there are not fewer than three millions and a half of our fellow-subjects, or one-eighth of the population of the United Kingdom dependent upon it for subsistence; and if the comforts and material prosperity of this large section of the population be examined into, will it not be found that these labourers have not only been proved to be worthy of, but have amply obtained, their hire? They enjoy in their vocations bodily health equal to any other similar portion of the working classes; their morals, intelligence, and general circumstances, are not inferior to either any manufacturing or domestic section with which they can be compared; and their loyalty, honesty, and general fidelity, are deserving of all praise.

Whilst Great Britain has largely benefited by the cotton trade, it is to be regretted that Ireland has not followed the excellent example of Scotland, and earned a fair share of this prize of industry.

[To be continued.]

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