terms in the cession of the Netherlands to Austria, in the erection of the "barrier" against French aggression, and in the stipulations for the continued closing of the Scheldt. Nor was the decline the result of commercial or financial disaster. Whenever Adam Smith, writing some sixty years later, wishes to give an illustration of a country with great accumulated wealth, he alludes to Holland: according to him the Dutch, in spite of the Navigation Act, still possessed the largest share of the world's carrying trade. Yet in spite of Dutch victories, and in spite of Dutch wealth, there can be no doubt that Holland drops out of the list of great states after 1713, that she ceases to be a rival of England as she had been in the days of Tromp and De Ruyter. And the decline is not merely military or political; it extends to the literary, intellectual, and artistic activity which had characterised the Republic in the days of its greatness. It would be superfluous here to discuss the causes of this decline, and to examine how far it was due to exhaustion and excessive taxation, and how far to the weakness of a federal government, and to the relaxation of moral fibre when the pressure of the long struggle for self-preservation was removed, which had for a time silenced domestic discord, and had called forth heroic qualities proportioned to the magnitude of the interests at stake. The disappearance of Holland from among the great powers left Britain face to face with France. The great struggle between these states in the eighteenth century has been called by Professor Seeley the second Hundred Years' War, in which the prize contended for was maritime supremacy and expansion in America and Asia. The victory of the island power in this prolonged contest must be regarded as one of the greatest causes of British ascendancy. The triumph has often been attributed to the superior qualities of the British as colonists, but it may be doubted whether this explanation is correct, and it is certainly not exhaustive. I should be inclined to lay greater stress on the fact that Britain had a far stronger initial impulse towards expansion than France, with its population of peasant proprietors and metayer tenants. England had also a sounder system of finance. The Commonwealth had abolished the medieval methods of taxation, and had substituted a system which, whatever its defects in detail, had the supreme merit of making the revenue proportionate to the national wealth. In France, on the other hand, financial reform was successfully resisted by the privileged classes, and the old exactions, oppressive and unfair in their incidence, were retained till the Revolution. Hence it was that France reeled under the burden of a military expenditure which Britain was able to bear with comparative ease. Above all, the attention of England was in the main concentrated upon the naval and colonial struggle, whereas France throughout the century was engaged in a series of great continental struggles-wars with Austria, wars with Prussia, wars to defend the Republic, and wars to aggrandise the Empire. These wars diverted the attention of France from her interests in India and America, and enabled Britain to gain and to keep, except for a short period during the American revolt, that naval ascendancy which, as Captain Mahan has so brilliantly shown, was the real efficient cause of her ultimate triumph. Two other circumstances deserve mention as contributing to the unique success of Britain in manufactures and commerce. The one was the enormous stimulus given to industry by the great mechanical inventions associated with the names of Hargreaves, Crompton, Arkwright, and Watt. The other was the notable change in economic theory which began in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was a most fortunate event that this country not only produced an Adam Smith, but also took the lead in translating his precepts into practice. His teaching dealt a fatal blow to the so-called mercantile system, with its shortsighted conception of the benefits to be derived from international trade, and with its disastrous methods of colonial policy. His lessons on the latter point were powerfully brought home to statesmen by the great American revolt, and it was by no fortuitous coincidence that the "Wealth of Nations" was published to the world in the same year as the Declaration of American Independence. The carrying into practical effect of the teaching of Adam Smith, first by Pitt, and then, in later generations, by Huskisson, Peel, and Gladstone, contributed the most powerful stimulus to the modern advance of trade and of the industrial production which supplies material for trade. It is not for me on this occasion to trace the economic history of the country to the present day, or to discuss whether we are likely to retain that eminence in manufactures, trade, and colonisation which we were driven by circumstances to seek, and which we have clung to ever since. I will only suggest one obvious method by which we might regain some of that start which, in some respects, we have been losing of late. We were the first to introduce many of the chief methods of production and locomotion; we were the first to formulate and to practice the true principles of trade; it would be well for us if we could also be the first to solve the problem set before us in the rival interests of employers and employed; if we could provide some method of averting those desperate struggles which waste the best energies of both classes, and assuredly contribute nothing to the material welfare and progress of the community. VI.-Women's Industries in Scotland. By MISS MARGARET H. IRWIN, Assistant Commissioner, late Royal Commission on Labour. [Read before the Society, 18th March, 1896.] IN the paper which I have to read to you to-night I shall try to confine myself to such features and characteristics of women's industries as present themselves, not to the partisan of either capital or labour, but to the economic investigator. The facts, that I shall have to present to you were chiefly collected for the Royal Commission on Labour, and were collected, if I may be allowed to say so, with the strictest impartiality from both employers and employed. The wages figures and other statistics on which I have based my conclusions were supplied to me from the books of the employers (and in the case of the Glasgow Cotton Trade, twenty firms were visited), and, when possible, the books and billets of the workers were also examined. I may say, to begin with, that I shall try to avoid, as far as I can, the raising of controversial points, or of giving merely speculative personal opinion. I shall also avoid opening up such large questions as the comparative merits of the collectivist and the individualist systems. All I have to say relates to the commercial system as it is—not as, in the opinion of some persons it ought to be, or it might be. I only propose to put before you, then, some of the features that characterise women's industries in Scotland at the present time, leaving to others to point the moral, but believing, at least, that the first step towards any solution of a problem is to become acquainted with the conditions that constitute it. The point in connection with women's trades in Scotland for which I wish more particularly to ask your consideration is the decay of some of the major industries employing women, the causes which (it is generally alleged) are bringing this about, and how far the same may be remediable. The subject was very much before me during my investigation in Scotland for the Royal Commission on Labour, and has been before me in one form or another ever since. The decay of these industries is a question in which both employers and workers must have a common interest, and the remedies are points on which, in some cases at least, I hope they may find some common agreement. The substance of what I have to say I have already said on several occasions before representative bodies of workers, but this is the first time I have had the honour to place these points before an assembly in which, presumably, the interests of capital are chiefly represented. I think no one who has the opportunity of taking a bird's-eye view of women's industries here, or who has occasion to inquire into their past as well as their present conditions, can fail to be struck by the seriousness of the outlook in many of them, and how, in certain trades, in spite of an occasional uplook, there seems to be a steady downward tendency all along the line. Wages were reported to me to be falling steadily, until, in some cases, they had reached a bare subsistence level, and what made the hopelessness of it all, and the pitifulness of the workers' struggles against ever-increasing reductions in wages, was that the industries themselves were leaving the district and leaving the country, and few of those most concerned seemed to know why they were going, or where. It was noteworthy that many of these trades were not "fashion " trades, but those producing commodities that were used daily and in large quantities by the public generally. It is not possible, of course, for me to do more than touch on a few of these trades. There were certain minor industries that were said to be suffering from the operation of vexatious tariffs, from the competition of foreign prison labour, and the irregular. competition of partially-supported labour in industrial institutions at home, all of which form an interesting study to the economic investigator. But those which I wish more particularly to speak of are the textile trades, because of their greater local interest and importance, and also because it seems reasonable to think that the causes operating against the prosperity of these are to some extent remediable. One may classify broadly the industries. which employ women as (a) The Textile Trades. (b) The Clothing Trades. There is, perhaps, no centre in the United Kingdom that affords |