INCREASED POPULATION OF THE NORTH. 799 



malignant activities of the quarter sessions assessments were 

 manifested, there was a far less satisfactory increase induced. 

 Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, I. viii), with that sagacity 

 and intelligence which distinguishes him so markedly from his 

 successors, saw that the misery of a people was no bar to its 

 increase, and, if the facts had been before him, would have 

 proved his case, instead of indulging in idle and shallow specu- 

 lations about the present causes of a present mischief. He 

 would have sought them, as all men of sense should seek 

 them, in unnatural, in factitious conditions. During the first 

 half of the seventeenth century, the population of England grew 

 as rapidly as that of Ireland up to 1846, and under the same 

 set of circumstances, during the growing misery of the poor, 

 due to the rapacity of landowners, assisted by wicked laws. 



In one particular the England of the seventeenth century 

 was more fortunate than the Ireland of the eighteenth. Her 

 manufactures were not destroyed by the malignity of an alien 

 parliament, the strings of which were pulled by greedy traders 

 and covetous landlords. It was the object of the English 

 Parliament that English industries should flourish, even if 

 a desert was made elsewhere. But they were to flourish 

 at the expense of labour, and to the profit of the producer of 

 raw material and of the employer. Nine-tenths I believe of 

 the growth of the English population in the seventeenth 

 century was due to the spread of the linen and woollen 

 manufacture, especially of yarns, spun in private houses, and 

 sold to the dealers or weavers at such prices as are indicated 

 by the cost of the raw material, and the payment made by the 

 pound or stone for spinning, and the wages earned by the 

 yard for weaving, some of which I have been able to record 

 in the sixth volume. It was poor pay, for very often the in- 

 dustry was subordinated to other avocations. What it came 

 to be at last is proved by the evidence taken before the 

 Factory Acts were passed. It could be specially carried 

 on by women and young children. Their miseries may be 

 imagined. They have not been and cannot be told. 



