AND THE MODE OP TEACHING THEM. 441 



power conferred ; and all the operations necessary to convert, the- 

 raw material into the perfect web were conducted in the same 

 establishment. From that period and chiefly from that source- 

 riches have overspread the land. Manchester, Nottingham, Pres- 

 ton, and Glasgow, and many towns of less note, owe their wealth 

 and their prosperity to this single manufacture ; and millions of 

 inhabitants are indebted to it for their subsistence.* Such, in fact, 

 has been the progress of the cotton manufacture in England, in 

 these fifty years, that, notwithstanding the pressure of the national 

 debt, the heavy burden of the taxes, and the consequent dearness 

 of all the necessaries of life, notwithstanding these great dis- 

 advantages of England, as compared with other nations, she 

 purchases the raw cotton of another hemisphere, carries it 10,000 

 miles to her workshops, transforms it into a web, and sends it back 

 again the same distance, to China and to India, to surpass in 

 beauty, in perfection of workmanship, and in cheapness, the 

 products of the native art, fabricated with all the refinements of 

 manual labour, and with the traditionary experience of many 

 centuries, f 



But let us look to actual numbers. At the accession of George 

 III., in 1760, the value of the cotton goods annually manufactured 

 in Great Britain was estimated at 200,000. In the year 1824, 

 according to the statement of Mr. Huskisson, it amounted to 

 thirty-three millions and a half ; and of this sum more than half 

 is returned to the country annually by foreign nations, in the shape 

 of profit and wages. During the war with France, 569 millions 

 sterling was added to the national debt. The sum returned by 

 foreign countries as the price of British manufactures, during the 

 same period a period, of course, o crippled commercial energy 

 amounted to 548 millions, 400 millions of which was the return 

 for British capital and British labour. And the large share which 

 the steam-engine has had in this manufacturing prosperity is 

 such as fully to justify the assertion often made, that it was the 

 invention of this instrument which enabled England to sustain a 



* In the first and last of the above-named towns, the increase of tho population in 

 thirty years (from 1801 to 1831) amounted to upwards of 150 per cent. The total 

 number of individuals directly employed in the cotton manufacture in Great Britain is 

 estimated at 800,000. 



t "At Calicut, in the East Indies," says Mr. Babbage, "whence tho cotton cloth 

 called calico derives its name, the price of labour is one-seventh of that in England, 

 yet the market is supplied from British looms." 



