No. I.-RISE AND PROGRESS OF BRITISH INDUSTRY.* OUR national greatness is more the result of production than of inheritance. We were not born great; like Pallas from the brain of Jove we did not spring perfect at birth, but have acquired eminence by gradual advances. Essentially we are a manufactured people, and our progress, like our existing superiority, is the reward of artistical adaptions and combinations. The spirit of popular liberty may have been derived from Saxon ancestors, but the framework of our polity, as of our religion, is of Roman or Jewish paternity. The Normans, though they conquered and enslaved us, were the first to convert a federative community into an integral kingdom, and to confer upon it those primal constituents of social happiness and civil power-subordination, unity, and consolidated strength. Other elements, however, beside nationality, laws, and institutions, enter into the composition of modern civilization. The most splendid advances of the ancients savoured of the rude state from which they had more immediately emerged, were barbarous in character, and mainly consisted in the emblazonry of the regal or sacerdotal order; or in mere territorial dominion and architectural magnificence. They had few triumphs of justice, morals, and intellect to boast; only those of superstition, force, and pageantry. In another respect they stood in a marked position of inferiority; they knew little of domestic or personal utilities; they degraded women and made slaves of men; affected to despise commerce, trade, manufactures, and the useful arts. It is in these last that the chief science, glory, and excellence of the moderns consist, and in this line of superiority Great Britain holds the foremost place. The story of her industrial development is diversified and interesting, and forms that element of her fame and might that we purpose briefly to elucidate. Undoubtedly the first of national arts is that which pertains to subsistence. The problem is only yet in progress of solution, both among individuals and communities-how the necessaries of life can be best made coadequate with the demands of consumption. After ages of experience there is still everywhere disparity between food and consumers. The great struggle of existence is still for bread. In the infancy of nations the difficulty may be easily comprehended. A community depending on the precarious supplies of the chase may be often in want. Even * 1.—Sir Robert Peel's Financial and Commercial Statement, House of Commons, Feb. 14, 1845. 2.-The History of British Commerce, 3 vol. By G. L. Craik, M.A. Knight, London, 1845. VOL. I.-NO. VI. 2 E the more advanced condition of the pastoral state does not afford an unfailing resource. Job abounded in flocks and herds, and was the largest grazier in the land of Uz, but he did not escape the trials of fortune. Fatal diseases, unfavourable seasons, and the difficulty of finding winter food often render supplies from live-stock uncertain or inadequate. Agriculture enlarges the field of production. Industry and science may multiply to an unknown extent the produce of the soil. The earth spontaneously yields little available to human sustenance. All the vegetables brought to our tables, all the crops that cover our fields in autumn, and the varied produce of our orchards and gardens are not the free gifts of nature, but the produce of skill and perseverance. Indebted, however, as we are to the rural art, it has not been distinguished by the same brilliant career of discovery that has signalized manufacturing industry. Great changes have been made, and important improvements introduced, still a remarkable coincidence subsists between present modes and implements of husbandry and those in use two thousand years past. At this early period the agriculture of Britain was the same as that practised in Gaul and Belgium, into which countries it had been brought from Italy, and the last had doubtless copied it from the Greeks, who derived their knowledge from Egypt and the East. One practice may be remarked of our aboriginal ancestors, which is still common in some of the provinces of Spain, namely, of storing up their corn, not in granaries, but in pits or subterraneous caverns. As soon as the Romans had obtained a firm establishment in the island, they began to extend their own system of cultivation. Agriculture was an art in which this proud people greatly delighted, and which they encouraged in all the provinces of their empire. When they designed to bestow the highest praise on a good man, they used to say he understands agriculture well and is an excellent husbandman.' From the Saxons the Britons did not derive any improvement; the invaders were their inferiors, and it is probable the conquered became not only the servants but teachers of their new masters. But the Anglo-Normans were not less devoted to rural industry than the Romans. Both, however, employed the implements still in use, namely, ploughs, scythes, sickles, spades, axes, pruning-hooks, forks, flails, carts and waggons, though of less perfect construction. The plough, for example, had but one stilt or handle with an iron coulter and share, and a wheel attached to the end of the beam. The Norman plough had two wheels, and in the light soil of Normandy was commonly drawn by one or two oxen, but in England a greater number, according to the nature of the soil, was necessary. The plough was held by one hand; in the other was the plough-beetle, which served both for cleaning and mending the plough and breaking clods. The beetle continued in use in some parts of the country till within the last thirty years. The oxen were yoked by ropes made of twisted willow, and sometimes of the skins of whales, and which was certainly a better mode than that practised in Ireland in the time of Camden, and continued in the Hebrides up to 1811, when harness was dispensed with altogether, the horse's tail being fastened to the plough or harrow. The efficiency of agriculture may be judged of by the results. About the time of the Conquest the population to be supported out of the produce of the soil was probably under two millions, and the average consumption of each person was certainly below the present, inferior in quality as well as in quantity. For centuries after this period husbandry presented few striking marks of advancement. The settlement of the Norman proprietary in England, with the long wars of the Plantagenets for the Crown, and the unceasing domestic feuds of the barons, must have seriously interrupted the operations of industry. The monks, who were the chief landowners, were also the chief improvers. They were many of them acquainted with the best modes practised on the continent, and their intelligence enabled them to apply their knowledge with skill in the culture of their ample estates. Improvements in the breeds of horses and cattle, the embanking of rivers to prevent the overflowing of adjacent grounds, and the draining the fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire form the most noticeable points in the subsequent progress of agriculture. The quiet settlement of the country under the Tudors was favourable to meliorations. The first English treatise on rural science was published in the reign of Henry VIII. by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, judge of the Common Pleas. It does not exhibit any novelties of practice, but shows that the operations of husbandry were more skilfully conducted than formerly. Directions are given for draining, clearing, and enclosing a farm, and for enriching and reducing the soil to tillage. Lime and marl he strongly recommended. Fallowing was practised as preparatory to wheat, but not that rotation of crops and fallows which invigorate the soil and preserve its fertility. When a field was exhausted by successive harvests, the farmer suffered it to rest till naturally recruited, and proceeded to cultivate a fresh field from a part of his pastures. Leases, though not uncommon, were precarious, neither protecting the tenant from the entry of purchasers, nor securing him against ejectment by fictitious recoveries, Fitzherbert recommended that they should be for three existing lives, to enable tenants, whose sole stock is their personal labour, to surround their farms and divide them by hedges into proper enclosures, from which he augurs great profit, by reason of the compostyng and dongyng of the cattell.' Sir John Fortescue had before enforced the utility of hedge-rows, planted with trees, to protect the flocks and herds from bleak winds and sultry heats. It was an innovation that greatly embellished the rural landscape, gave it a more horticultural aspect; but hedges and ditches were a kind of machinery that abridged manual labour, leaving the herdsmen, shepherds, and other professors of the pipe and crook, who form fascinating elements in Arcadian verse, almost without em- . ployment Ät the close of the seventeenth century, turnips, clover, and potatoes had been introduced into England. Some of the exiles who returned with Charles II. brought from Flanders salutary examples of good husbandry. In Blythe's Improver Improved, published in 1649, are the first traces of the alternate system of agriculture, or the introduction of clover, turnips, &c. between culmiferous crops. The practice did not make much progress for fifty years after; and though justly esteemed the foundation of good farming, there are still extensive districts in which it is imperfectly understood. Having glanced at the chief features of agricultural advancement, we come to the next important branch of public industry. The production of the raw material of commodities must precede the interchange of them, and the first and most urgent production is that of the food of the people. The order of our brief exposition, therefore, has been in natural course in shewing the first steps by which national subsistence has been augmented. The native riches of England must, from the earliest period, have made her a mercantile community. She was renowned for carrying on a trade in tin with the Phoenician states before the landing of Julius Cæsar. Relatively to her neighbours she had become a rich country at the time of the Conquest, and afforded almost as tempting a booty to the invaders as Peru and Mexico to the Spaniards. The Norman ecclesiastics were rewarded with the gift of wealthy abbeys, monasteries, and churches, and many rich heiresses and widows of the Saxon nobles slain at the battle of Hastings were the prizes of the lay followers of the conqueror. According to every account the plunder carried over to Normandy after the victory was immense, consisting of coined gold and gold in bars, gold and silver vases, embroidered stuffs, and large drinking cups of the Saxons, made of buffalo horn and ornamented at either extremity with gold or silver. William of Poictiers, who was King William's chaplain, speaks of England as an El Dorado. That land,' says he, abounds more than Normandy in the precious metals. If in fertility it may be termed the granary of Ceres, in riches it should be called the treasury of Araby. The English women excel in the use of the needle and in embroidering in gold, the men in every species of elegant workmanship. Moreover, the best artists of Germany live amongst them; and merchants who repair to distant countries import the most valuable articles of foreign manufacture, unknown in Normandy.' The rich spoils carried away were distributed among the churches and religious houses of Normandy, and, according to the testimony of the chaplain, excited great admiration both among the natives and foreigners, who, out of curiosity, flocked to behold them. Exclusive of London many other cities and ports had risen into commercial repute. Winchester was long the favourite metropolitan residence of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and a place of extensive trade and manufacture. Exeter was distinguished for opulence and the stout defence it had made against the Norman, aided by the foreign merchants and mariners in the harbour, who were compelled by the citizens to assist them. Dover, Hastings, Sandwich, and the other channel towns, afterwards celebrated as the Cinque Ports, together with Lincoln, York, and more northern places, all at the time traded with the continent-with Italy and France, and perhaps also Spain, as well as the north of Germany. An active traffic already existed with Ireland, Bristol and Chester forming the chief entrepôts. No doubt the Conquest was ultimately favourable to the increase of foreign connections; but the first shock was disastrous. The general tranquillity and security were disturbed; property was unsettled, and during the long struggle for mastery that ensued, the minds and hands of men were withdrawn from peaceful pursuits, to mingle in occupations and excitements that produce no wealth. Nor was the system of government and society that was at last established favourable, even after the consolidation of the kingdom, to trade and industry. It was a system of oppression and severe exaction, depriving the citizen of the fruits of his exertions and of motives to labour; a system of which the animating principle was the encouragement of the martial spirit, to which that of trade is as opposite as creation is to destruction At an early period after the Conquest may be dated the first introduction of the WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE into this country. Its origin was curious. A number of Flemings having been compelled to leave their own country in consequence of an inundation of the sea, they were permitted to settle in the |