[March, 
134 Offensive Manufactures. 
see with such pity in the dwellings of the poor — we mix all 
up together. Custom has rendered this process so familiar 
to us that many persons cannot even conceive the possibility 
of allotting out different parts of a country for different pur- 
poses, and of having for such parts entirely distinct laws 
and regulations. Yet that such an arrangement would be for 
the benefit both of manufacturers and of the rest of the 
community can be shown beyond the reach of doubt. The 
manufacturer, within his appointed districts, might enjoy 
very considerable latitude as regards the escape of fumes, 
the discharge of polluted waters, or the accumulation of 
alkali-waste, chrome-waste, spent shales, slags, &c., so long 
as he occasioned no demonstrable injury to public health. 
The farmer, on the other hand, in his districts, might plant 
and sow without the fear of his crops being blighted by cor- 
rosive vapours. The country gentleman would not be 
annoyed by the withering of his woods and plantations, and 
every man’s tastes would be gratified. 
It is to be remarked that a certain rough sorting-out of 
trades and manufactures was effected by nature. The iron- 
foundry, the cotton- or woollen-mill, the alkali-works, &c., 
were, from obvious reasons, ereCted where fuel is cheap, — in 
other words, on or near to the coal-mining regions. By a 
fortunate coincidence these districts are generally of little 
value from an agricultural point of view, and until the rise 
of manufactures they were very poor and scantily peopled. 
As little are they noted for beautiful scenery. It would 
perhaps be difficult to find a traCt of country less favoured 
by nature than South Lancashire ; and if its eastern section 
has become the centre of the cotton-trade, and its western 
part the head-quarters of some of the largest chemical 
manufactures in the world, there is an admirable fitness in 
the localisation. It seems scarcely fair that great land- 
owners, whose barren and unprofitable acres have been 
covered with manufacturing towns and villages, should com- 
plain of the nuisances incidental to the very trades which 
have so largely magnified their rent-rolls. They cannot, by 
any Royal Commission or ACt of Parliament whatever, 
succeed in both keeping their cake and eating it. If they 
will preserve their fields and trees green, as was the case 
two centuries ago, — if they aspire to catch trout in the 
Sankey Brook, — they must be content with the slender rents 
which fell to the share of their ancestors. 
But the natural division which sprang up between manu- 
facturing and agricultural-residential districts is now less 
well-marked than was the case fifty, or even twenty, years 
