1862.] A Plea for Cotton and for Industry. 517 



thereby throwing a lustre upon his own name and upon the seventeenth 

 century. 



In the middle of the eighteenth century a considerable home manu- 

 facture had arisen. Cotton was spun by hand and afterwards blended 

 in the loom with linen or woollen, thus producing a mixed fabric. The 

 supply of cotton was then inconsiderable and was obtained from Turkey 

 and the Levant, and from the West Indies. Mechanical science now 

 escaped from the libraries and traditions of the learned, and offered 

 practical aid to the infant industry. Such a galaxy of talent and inven- 

 tive genius as then stood forth to develope new methods of increasing the 

 comforts both of the palace and of the cottage the world had not seen. 

 By an almost mysterious combination of efforts, Hargreaves, Whyatt, 

 Arkvvright, and Crompton were devising their several systems of spin- 

 ning cotton ; Watt was rendering available the majestic power of vapour, 

 directing, controlling, and dooming it to become the universal drudge 

 of man ; Scheele and Berthollet, with their oxygenated muriatic acid 

 blanched the calico and the cambric ; and the Mauvillions, Nixons, and 

 Peels gave their coloured tints to print these new fabrics ; and as if 

 inspired by the inventions which sprang from the east of the Atlantic, 

 the Anglo-Saxon in the United States of America originated the culti- 

 vation of cotton in that great territory : but in giving this boon, the pro- 

 duction of slave labour, he conferred the bane whence the vast cotton 

 industry now suffers in the deprivations inflicted upon labour and capital. 

 In the year 1700, when mechanical appliances were comparatively un- 

 known in the manufacture of cotton, the consumption of this material 

 might be one million pounds weight; but in 1860 the quantity had cul- 

 minated in the consumption of one thousand million pounds weight in 

 that year. Cotton began to arrive from America in 1787 in sufficient 

 quantity to prove the power of the States to produce it, and in that year 

 Crompton triumphed over his mechanical difficulties and completed the 

 mule, this machine being the great agent at the present time for the 

 production of coarse as well as of fine yarns ; but spirming by rollers 

 and Arkwright's throstle spinning frame had been invented twenty 

 years previously ; hence the history of the modern and mechanical cotton 

 trade may be dated from this period. 



Eighty years ago the cotton industry of our country was thus ini- 

 tiated, and from that time to the present, progress, improvements, and 

 extension have characterized it. The science, skill, and invention 

 which have accompanied its development are wonderful. It has 

 afforded employment, comfort, and prosperity to many millions of the 

 people of this country during that period, and it has contributed very 

 largely to the national revenue. During the great strugsrle with the 

 first Napoleon our men were able to leave their country for the strife 

 of war, and yet the steam-engine and the mechanical agencies which 

 existed at home more than compensated for their physical loss; but 

 here was the waste of the nation's strength. Wiser would it have been 

 had these new resources been developed for the moral, mental, and 

 social improvement and comfort of the people at large. Most probably 



