GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 107 



with Lancashire, were the poorest counties, contributing less 

 to the acreage than any other divisions. Cumberland, Here- 

 ford, Cornwall, Northumberland (excluding Newcastle, which 

 is separately assessed), Salop, Devon, and Westmoreland, all 

 contribute less than a sack to three thousand acres. But the 

 southern, south midland, and eastern counties were generally 

 wealthy, the richest after Norfolk being Middlesex (excluding 

 London), and Oxfordshire. 



Time has reversed these conditions, and the wealth of Eng- 

 land has migrated to her western coast. But the place of these 

 great hives of industry which now store up and disperse their 

 products to the whole world, whose energy is ceaseless and 

 growth unremitting, was then little else than moorland and fen, 

 scantily peopled, and rude even by comparison with the rude 

 age before us. The course of inland traffic never lay on the 

 western side, except occasionally through the towns on the 

 great northern road. In general, when the traveller had need to 

 journey northwards, his route lay through the eastern highways, 

 and the more hospitable and safer counties on the coast of the 

 German ocean. The Mersey was then a silent estuary, the 

 Irwell a mountain stream. And on the other hand, Ravenspur, 

 the great Yorkshire harbour, has been buried in the ocean, the 

 Norfolk sea-ports have wasted away or silted up, the Sussex 

 forges are extinct. The renowned fair of Stourbridge, great 

 as that of Novgorod, is forgotten the chartered towns of the 

 east, the midland, and the southern counties, all originally 

 gifted with parliamentary representation, because they were 

 the seats of medieval manufactures, have become rotten 

 boroughs, urbes umbratiles, villages, whose history can be 

 guessed at only by the great grey church and the ruined castle. 



It is not easy to discover the earliest causes which have led, 

 almost within our own age, to the growth of population and 

 the settlement of vast industries in the midland and north- 

 western counties. The accident which gave their greatness to 

 Birmingham and Manchester have indeed been supported by 

 the special advantages of vast natural treasures in the imme- 



