and directly depend upon, manufactures for their | tity of iron produced in England and Wales is support; and they supply the materials of that not supposed to have exceeded 18,000 tons a commerce for which this empire is so peculiarly year; but the application of pit-coal to the prodistinguished; and which extends to, civilises, duction of iron having soon after become pretty and enriches almost every country of the globe. general, the manufacture began gradually to inWe regret our inability to lay before the reader crease, the produce in 1788 being estimated at any accurate accounts of the value of the gross 68,000 tons, in 1796 at 125,000 tons, and in 1806 annual produce of any of the great departments at 250,000 tons. Since this last mentioned period, of manufacturing industry. The following the progress of the iron trade has been such that estimates must, therefore, be regarded as mere at this moment (1845) there are certainly not approximations; though we are disposed to less than from 1,100,000 to 1,200,000 tons of iron think that in most cases they come pretty near annually produced in England and Wales, and the mark :about 420,000 tons in Scotland. The business has now become of the very highest importance. Iron is employed with the greatest advantage in many ways for which it was formerly supposed not to be at all suitable: so much indeed is this the case that iron steam-boats have been constructed for crossing the Atlantic! And it is to the cheapness and abundance of our supply of iron, as much as to any thing else, that the superiority of our machinery, and consequently of most branches of our manufactures, is to be ascribed. Cotton Iron and hardware Watches, Jewellery, &c. Leather Linen Silk Glass and earthenware 35,000,000 24,000,000 10,000,000 4,250,000 2,000,000 2,400,000 The value of the above articles amounts to a gross sum of 121,750,000l. But exclusive of these, there are other departments of manufacturing industry of great value and importance; such, for example, as the manufacture of spirits and beer, cabinet-makers' goods, &c. In point of fact, however, but a small part of the value of spirits and beer is derived from the labour expended upon their preparation, or upon their extraction from the malt used in their manufacture; and there are no means by which to form any estimate, how rude soever, of the value of cabinetmakers' work. Some information will subsequently be given in regard to shipbuilding. * But the progress of the British cotton manufacture since 1760 is undoubtedly the most extraordinary phenomenon in the history of industry. In 1764 the consumption of cotton wool did not amount to 4 million lbs., whereas it now exceeds the prodigious amount of 540 million lbs.! It is difficult to give any very satisfactory explanation of this astonishing progress. Much, no doubt, must be ascribed to the influence of the general causes already specified, but much also has been owing to what may be called accidental circumstances. The cotton manufacture may, in fact, be said to be wholly the result of the inventions and discoveries of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Watt, Crompton, and a few others. And the fact of Hargreaves, Arkwright, and Watt being Englishmen gave us that early priority and superiority in the manufacture which our favourable situation in other respects has since enabled us to maintain. It is seldom an easy matter for new rivals to come into successful competition with those who have already But these statements, how imperfect soever, are more than sufficient to evince the vast extent and importance of our manufactures. It would be desirable, on many accounts, to be able to separate the sums mentioned above as constituting the gross annual value of our principal manufactures into their constituent parts, that is, to show how much of the total value of any branch of manufacture is made up of raw produce, or of the value of some other branch of manufacture embodied in it, and how much consists of the wages of labour and superintend-attained to considerable proficiency in any art ence, and how much of the profits and wear and or manufacture; and they rarely succeed, untear of capital. But to do this is, in many cases, less they have some very material advantage on next to impossible; and in all cases, the greatest their side. But in this instance, besides having care and circumspection are required to avoid the start of foreigners, the natural and moral falling into the most serious errors. It is ne- circumstances under which our manufacturers cessary also to observe, that considerable care is have been placed have given them advantages always required in drawing conclusions from not enjoyed in any thing like the same degree the gross value of any manufacture in regard to by the manufacturers of any other country. the addition really made by it to the aggregate Were any change or revolution effected in mawealth of the country. Thus, assuming the chinery that should admit of coal being advangross annual value of the woollen manufacture tageously dispensed with, it is difficult to say to be about 24,000,000l. a year, we should fall what effect it might have in the long run on into the greatest imaginable error, if we sup- our manufactures. We believe, however, that posed, as is commonly done, that it made an an- our advantageous situation, the magnitude of nual addition of that amount to the gross produce our capital, the industry of our workmen, and of the country. Of this sum of 24,000,000l., the determination of all classes to advance nearly a half, or about 11,000,000l., may consist themselves in the world, would, under any cirof the value of the wool; and the value of the cumstances, insure our continued prosperity British wool, which is by far the largest portion of as a manufacturing people. While, however, the whole, being already included in the estimate coal continues to be as indispensable in inof the annual produce of agriculture, would be dustrious undertakings as at present, and while reckoned twice over, were it also included in the we preserve our free institutions without the estimate of the produce of the woollen manufac-alloy of popular licentiousness and agitation, ture. The same caution must be used in almost every case; and unless it be carefully attended to, none but the most misleading inferences need be looked for. there is but little ground for supposing that our manufacturing prosperity will be impaired. On the contrary, it is reasonable to expect, seeing the increasing wealth of our foreign customers, the The progress made by Great Britain in manu-greater competition at honie and abroad, and the factures since the middle of last century has been quite unprecedented. At that period the quan- of the next twelve months! At least 100,000 tons will be added to this quantity in the course greater attention paid to scientific investigations, | foreign countries. Duties being laid on most that it will go on increasing, and that the discoveries and progress to be made in the next age will surpass those made in the present, wonderful as they have been. articles imported from abroad, it is necessary for fiscal purposes that their amount should be ascertained with as much accuracy as possible; and it is believed that the declarations of Commerce. Neither the commerce of Tyre the real value of the exports made by the exor Carthage in antiquity, nor that of Italy in the porters do not differ materially from the truth. middle ages, nor of Holland in the 17th century, The trade carried on with colonies, or the could compare, for the variety and value of the colonial trade, though conducted under different products which it distributes, and the all but un-regulations and duties, is substantially the same limited range which it embraces, to the existing with the foreign trade; and may be, and indeed commerce of England. Our products are found generally is, considered as a branch of the latter. in every country, and our flag floats over every sea. We subjoin a few statements respecting the principal articles imported from and exported to the countries with which we have the greatest intercourse. Quæ regio terræ nostri non plena laboris ? And as all commerce is bottomed on a principle of reciprocity, and is sure to stimulate the industry and to add to the wealth of all who engage in it, we may safely affirm, that while the people of Britain are pursuing only their own interests, they are contributing in the most effectual manner to diffuse the blessings of civilisation and a taste for luxury and refinement. It is impossible, indeed, to overrate the beneficial influence of that commerce of which this country is the centre and mainspring. No one aware of its vast extent can have the smallest doubt that it Russia-Imports from:-Tallow, corn, flax and hemp, flax and linseed, timber, bristles, ashes, hides, iron, and coal, hardware, colonial products, &c. wax. Exports to:-Cotton twist, woollen fabrics, salt, Sweden and Norway Imports from: -Timber, iron, and bark. Exports to:- Cottons and cotton yarn, woollens, earthenware, hardware, coffee, indigo, tobacco, sugar, &c. Denmark - Imports from: -Corn and rape-seed, butter, bristles, wool, hides, and bark. Exports to:- Coal, salt, iron, and steel, earthenware, machinery, coffee, indigo, &c. Prussia- Imports from :- Corn, oak and fir timber, bark, bristles, wool, spelter, flax, &c. Exports to:Refined sugar, salt, cottons, hardware, earthenware, &c. Our trade with Prussia is principally carried on through Hamburgh, Germany Imports from: - Wool, corn, wines, butter, linens, hides, clover, rape-seed, smaltz, spelter, zaffre, furs, wooden clocks, &c. Exports to:- Cotton stuffs and yarn, woollens, refined sugar, hardware, earthenware, iron and steel, coal, salt, indigo, coffee, rum, A good deal of the tobacco, cotton wool, spices, &c. on German account. Netherlands-Imports from: Butter, cheese, corn, madder, geneva, flax and tow, hides, linens, seeds, toys, &c. Exports to:-Cotton stuff's and yarn, woollens, hardware, earthenware, salt, coal, and colonial produce. France Imports from: Brandy, wine, silk (raw and manufactured), gloves, madder, eggs, skins, and fruit. Exports to:- Wool, linens and linen yaru, brass and copper manufactures, machinery, coal, horses, &c. Large quantities of Nottingham lace are smuggled into France, and brandy into England. Portugal and Spain- Imports from: - Port and sherry wines, barilla, wool, raisins, dried fruits, lemons, oranges, olive oil, quicksilver, &c. Exports to:-Cotton stuffs, woollens, finens, hardware, and cutlery, iron and steel, soap, candles, leather, and cinnamon. is by far the most important means of civilisation and improvement ever brought into active operation. And we may unhesitatingly conclude, that instead of having approached, or, as some suppose, passed, its zenith, it will continue to increase with the increasing wealth, and consequently growing wants, of the various nations it is now rousing to activity and enterprise; and that it will derive new vigour, and have its foundations widened and consolidated, by every circum-imports from and exports to Holland and Belgium are stance calculated to promote the industry and to add to the riches of those with whom we deal. When we look a little narrowly into the matter, we find that at bottom society resolves itself into a series of exchanges; that every individual is in some sort a merchant; and that the principal business of life consists in the exchange of one sort of service or article for another. Hence in all countries the mercantile transactions carried on at home, or in the home trade, infinitely exceed in number and value those carried on The with foreigners, or in the foreign trade. latter, however, is not on that account the less important or valuable. But for the intercourse we carry on with foreigners we should be wholly destitute of many most desirable products-such, for example, as tea, coffee, wine, the precious metals, &c., as well as of the raw material of many of our most important manufactures, including those of cotton and silk. Generally, too, manufactures are improved and perfected according to the scale on which they are carried on; so that an extensive commerce is at once a consequence and a cause of manufacturing pre-eminence. The cotton mills of Lancashire and Lanarkshire could not have been constructed had the demand for their produce been confined to the empire only: they have not been built to supply the limited consumption of Great Britain and Ireland, but the unlimited consumption of the world! It is plainly impossible, from the nature of the thing, to form any estimate of the extent of the home trade carried on in any great country, or of the exchanges effected amongst its citizens. Formerly, accurate accounts were kept of the cross-channel trade between Great Britain and Ireland; but, with the exception of corn, no official account is now kept of the products conveyed from the one to the other. Luckily, however, this is not the case with the trade with Italy Imports from: Thrown silk, olive oil, straw for plaiting, straw plait and hats, currants, lemons, hemp, &c. Exports to:- Cotton stuffs and yarn, reoranges, wine, barilla, shumac, bark, cheese, lamb-skins, fined sugar, woollen manufactures, hardware and cutlery, iron and steel, coffee, indigo, tobacco, pimento, &c. madder, figs, raisins, valonea, oil, cotton, currants, senna, Turkey, Greece, &c. - Imports from: Silk, opium, &c. Exports to:-Cotton manufactures and twist, linens, hardware, iron and steel, cordage, woollens, earthenware, indigo, and coffee. Egypt and Africa- Imports from: Cotton wool, flax, linseed, senna and other drugs. Exports to:Cotton manufactures, iron and steel, arms and ammunition, and machinery. Foreign West Indies - Imports from :- Sugar, coffee, cotton, cigars, &c. Exports to:- Cotton manufactures, earthenware, linen manufactures, hardware, iron and steel, woollens, glass, machinery, &c. United States Imports from: Cotton, tobacco, wheat flour, wheat, rice, skins and furs, hides, staves, &c. Exports to:Cotton, linen, and woollen manufactures, hardware, cutlery, earthenware, salt, brass and copper, apparel, books, &c. South American States-Imports from :-Cotton wool, sugar, coffee, bullion and precious stones, cocoa, hides, fruits, bark, dye-woods, furs, &c. Exports to:- Cotton, linen, and woollen manufactures, earthenware, hardware, soap, candles, &c. African British Colonies- Imports from: - Cape and Constantia wines, hides, ivory, skins, aloes, palm-oil, teak, timber, wax, dye-woods, sugar from the Mauritius, &c. Exports to:-Cotton, woollen, and linen manufactures, apparel, earthenware, hardware, iron and steel, soap, candles, stationery, fire-arms, salt, machinery, &c. Asia and Australia Imports from: -Tea, índigo, cotton, sugar, silk, coffee, wool, pepper, saltpetre, piece- [For Tables II. and III. see pages following.] goods, rice, lac-dye, cinnamon, mace, cloves, cocoa-nut oil, whale-oil, ivory, tin, and the precious metals. Ex- The means of internal communication in Great ports to:- Cotton stuffs and yarn, woollens, linens, Britain are probably superior to those enjoyed earthenware, copper, hardware, iron and steel, leather, by any other country. Our high roads, which, glass, machinery, &c. American British Colonies - Imports from: Furs, during the first half of last century, were exefish, ashes, skins, turpentine, &c. Exports to:- Wool- crable, have been signally improved since the lens, cottons, linens, hardware, iron and steel, soap, close of the American war; and since the gecandles, earthenware, apparel, glass, cordage, coal, but-neral introduction of the practice of macadam ter, cheese, &c. British West Indies - Imports from: - Sugar, coffee, rum, cotton, pimento, molasses, mahogany, logwood, fustic, cocoa, cochineal, ginger, hides, &c. Exports to: -Cotton stuffs, linens, woollens, apparel, soap, candles, hardware, iron and steel, fish, earthenware, cordage, beef and pork, arms and ammunition, &c. The subjoined Tables give a pretty complete view of the commerce of the U. Kingdom. Those who wish for more ample information may refer to the Commercial Dictionary. 1. Official and Declared Value of Exports of British and Irish Produce and Manufactures; and Official Value of Exports of Foreign and Colonial Merchandise from Great Britain; and Official Value of Imports into the same, for the following Years. - (Parl. Paper, No. 243. Sess. 1830, and Finance Accounts.) 32,200,580 43,447,373 9,879,236 * 35,845,340 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 * * 30,435,268 10,366,966 12,677,431 8,938,741 7,643,120 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 37,820,293 35,569,077 10,525,026 1822 40,194,681 35,823,127 1823 43,558,488 36,176,897 1824 43,166,039 34,589,410 1825 48,024,952 37,600,021 1826 46,453,022 38,077,330 1827 40,332,854 30,847,528 10,066,503 1828 51,279,102 36,394,817 1829 52,019,728 36,150,379 9,806,543 1830 55,165,723 35,212,873 10,606,441 42,311,649 1831 60,492,637 37,691,302 8,535,786 1831 1835 69,633,854 39,305,513 9,820,586 11,549,913 1836 77,932,616 46,926,370 12,785,802 29,769,122 44,815,397 43,237,417 44,529,287 47,908,931+ 47,463,610 84,883,276 53,015,431 12,384,538 55,733,419 72,312,207 41,766,205 13,223,331 53,224,874 92,107,898 49,640,896 12,702,660 59,878,905 96,947,122 52,701,509 12,779,057 60,346,066 102,253,512 ising, they may be confidently pronounced to Still, however, it has been doubted whether these extraordinary improvements in the arts, and the vast extension of commerce, have conferred any real and important advantage on the bulk of the people. That they have added prodigiously to the field of employment is certain; but it has been contended that the increase of population, and consequently of the demand for labour, has been equal, or nearly so, to the increase of employment; that the condition of the people has not been materially improved; and that their command over the necessaries, conveniences, and enjoyments of life has not been augmented in any thing like the degree in which their numbers have increased. There is really, however, little or no truth in these representations. The condition of the great bulk of the people of Britain, and especially of the labouring classes, has been signally improved since the middle of last century. The greatest ameliorations have been effected in the interval in the diet, dress, and lodging of all classes. Towards the middle of last century, about half the people of England were consumers of The great increase in the official, and the comparatively stabarley, rye, and oat bread; whereas, at present, tionary amount of the real value of the exports, has occasioned a great deal of erroneous discussion. The rates by which the official not a tenth part of the population use any values of the exports are estimated were fixed in 1696, so that they bread unless made of wheat. The conhave long ceased to be any test of their actual value, and are of use only as showing the fluctuations in the quantities exported. To sumption of butchers' meat, as compared with an account of the real value of the exports from the declarations of the population, has also doubled, or more, in the the exporters. Now, it has been contended, that, while the great interval. (Statistics of the British Empire, ii. cap. increase in the official value of the exports since 1815 shows that the quantity of the articles exported has been proportionally aug- 5.); and the extraordinary increase in the conmented, their nearly stationary real value shows that we are selling this larger quantity for about the same price-a result which is said sumption of tea, sugar, coffee, and such like arto be most injurious. But the circumstance of a manufacturer or a ticles, is too well known to require being pointed merchant selling a large or small quantity of produce at the same price, affords no criterion of the advantageousness of the sale; for if, out. The improvements that have been made through improvements in the arts or otherwise, a particular article in clothing and lodging are, if possible, still years ago, it is obvious that double the quantity may be afforded at the more remarkable. Linen shirts, that were forsame price without injury to the producers. And this has been most 50,896,556 13,765,618 65,873,411 51,217,658 14,714,635 62,684,587 99,911,012 47,012,651 13,577,000 63,589,080 1844 117,574,563 51,932,056 13,947,513 68,483,050 1845 131,338,347 58,316,315 14,387,518 73,547.788 *Records destroyed by fire. supply this deficiency a plan was set on foot by Mr. Pitt, for keeping may now be produced for half the cost of its production 10 or 20 strikingly the case with the great articles of cotton, hardware, &c. The fall in the price of the former enables us to export and sell with a profit, (for unless such were the case, does any one suppose the exportation would continue?) at the same price, more than double the cotton stuff's and twist that we exported in 1815! Surely, however, this is, if any thing can be, a decisive proof of manufacturing improvement and commercial prosperity. merly luxuries, used only by the richer classes, are now worn by every body; and the old, coarse, comfortless home-made cloths have been wholly superseded by the better and cheaper products of the factories. The cheapness, to specify one article, and extraordinary abundance of cotton | within the last fifty, and still more the last thirty fabrics, have given the poorest females the means years, will at once be sensible of a vast im of greater comfort, neatness, and display in dress, provement. Essential as glass windows may than were enjoyed by the highest classes in the now appear, in the 16th century they were first half of last century. And any one who com- luxuries, all but unknown, in the castles of pares the old farm-houses and cottages, or the the principal nobility in England; and in Scothouses in the old narrow streets and lanes in any land, in the early part of last century, glass one of our great towns, with the farm-houses, was seldom seen in the windows of the first cottages, and town lodgings for the poor, built class of country houses, and never in cottages. II. Account of the real or declared Value of the various Articles of the Manufacture and Produce of the United Kingdom, exported to foreign Countries during each of the Six Years ending with 1843; specifying the Countries to which they were exported, and the Value of those annually shipped for each; and showing also the average Amount of Exports during the said Six Years to each Country, and to each of the Five great Divisions of the Globe; and the average Proportion exported to each, supposing the whole Exports to be 1,000. |