View of the National Industry from the Revolution of 1688 to the Accession of the House of Brunswick-Population-the South-Western Counties-The Woollen ManufactureClothing trade of the West-Domestic Character of the Manufacture-Foreign TradeBristol-Watering-places of the Coast-Travelling for pleasure-Inland Watering-places -Bath-Arsenal of Plymouth-Iron Manufactures-Forest of Dean-South WalesTin Mines of Cornwall-Copper Mines-Welsh Coal Field-Varieties of Employment in the West of England. We are entering upon that period of our national progress in which England is very slowly developing itself into a manufacturing and commercial country. The great features of that progress, and its accompanying changes in the character of the population, must ever be borne in mind when we attempt to trace the political history of the eighteenth century. This gradual development of her resources is not a mere accident in England's career. It constitutes the most important feature of her advancing political condition. It requires to be thoroughly understood, if we would rightly understand the circumstances which have given us our present place amongst the nations. We propose to offer a picture, derived indeed from scattered and imperfect materials, but with some approximation to exactness, of the industry, and the consequent condition and character of the people, during the period from the Revolution of 1688 to the accession of the house of Brunswick. Some of our authorities extend through the reign of George I.* But there were few changes of invention or discovery to mark a new epoch of industry as immediately following the close of the reign of Anne. It was the period before steam-engines and navigable canals-the period before the cotton trade-the period before scientific husbandry in its humblest form. VOL. V. * Such as Defoe's "Tour," which was commenced in 1722. B 2 VIEW OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY. [1689-1714. It was the period when the infant industry of England was thought to be only secure under the system of Protection, carried to the utmost amount of actual prohibition of foreign manufactures, or of repression by high duties. It was a period of nearly stationary population. It was a period of old staple production that was thought all sufficing for national prosperity, and of timid experiment in new fields of enterprise that were regarded as dangerous and delusive. Such notions went before the coming era of marvellous extension of productive power; and they long contended against the political philosophy and the scientific knowledge that determined that extension. Let us endeavour to trace what England was under its accustomed industrial habits,patient, persevering, slow England-during the quarter of a century that succeeded the Revolution. To our minds this is a period of extreme interest. It is the period of transition from the plough to the loom; from the spinning-wheel to the factory; from the age of tools to the age of machinery. Employments are intermingled. The shuttle is plied in the valleys where the fleece is sheared; the iron is smelted on the hills where the timber is felled for charcoal. Ships of small burden carry the products of one locality to another, up the estuaries and tributary rivers; and when navigation is impeded by sands and rocks, packhorses bear the cargo into the interior. The people of one district know very little of another district. Each district has something to exchange with its neighbour could they be brought into communication; but impracticable roads and unnavigable streams keep them separate. Every county has its peculiar dialect, the traces of which philologists eagerly hunt after. The sports of the West are not the same as those of the South-the superstitions of the North have a different character from those of the East. Yet, with all these material causes of isolation, England has one heart. She is made compact by her Protestantism, by her general laws, by her system of local government, by historical memory. Her people, in their island home, intensely feel their nationality. But on this island home, which has a greater sea-board than any other European country, there is a constant incentive to an adventurous race to go forth to the most distant shores-to trade, to colonise, to make all the choice productions of the world their own by exchange-to be the sea-kings, as were their Saxon forefathers. To comprehend what England has done in a century and a half, we must carefully look back upon the point from which she started in this wondrous race. One of the earliest proceedings of the first Parliament of William and Mary, was to grant an extraordinary Aid of £68,820 per month, for six months, payable in certain proportions by the several counties.* Shortly following this grant was an enactment "for the taking away the revenue arising from Hearth-money." This tax is described as "not only a great oppression to the poorer sort, but a badge of slavery upon the whole people, exposing every man's house to be entered into and searched at pleasure." + But this tax of Hearth-money was in one respect a national advantage. It formed the basis of all reasonable calculations of the amount of the population of England and Wales, towards the close of the seventeenth century, and for many years afterwards. Gregory King took the number of houses returned by the hearth-money collectors as determining his estimate that the 1 Gul. & Mar. c. 3. +1 Gul. & Mar. c. 10. 1689-1714.] POPULATION.-SOUTH WESTERN COUNTIES. 3 population was about five millions and a half; a calculation very nearly borne out by statistical researches in our own days. Other accounts take the population of this period at a higher rate. From a table printed in 1693 it appeared that there were 1,175,951 houses.* Upon the authority of this table, allowing six persons to each house, the population was subsequently calculated at 7,055,706.† In the "Magna Britannia," which commenced to be published in 1720, the number of houses in each county is given; and, in many cases, the equivalent number of the population is also given, though upon a varying scale. The result is not very materially different from the estimates of Gregory King; and if the houses, in number about 1,200,000, were averaged to give five persons for each house, they would show a population of six millions, at the period to which our present inquiry extends. The use we propose to make of these returns of houses, and of the assessment for Aid, § is to endeavour to form some estimate of the comparative population, industry, and wealth of each of the great divisions of the country; with occasional glances at the striking contrasts in our own times presented by some large industrial districts. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the West of England was the seat of the greatest commercial and manufacturing industry of the kingdom. The five South-Western Counties of Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, then contained the largest number of houses, and consequently the largest population, as compared with any other of our present eleven Registration Divisions. This district was also assessed in 1689 at a higher rate than any other. It was to pay £10,850 per month in aid, whilst the NorthWestern District of Cheshire and Lancashire was only to pay £1753. It contained 175,403 houses, whilst Cheshire and Lancashire only contained 64,256. The population of the South-Western Counties was (at the rate of 5 persons for a house) 877,015, whilst the North-Western District was 321,280. At the census of 1801, the South-Western District contained a population only increased by about one fourth during a hundred years; whilst the North-Western was three times as numerous as at the beginning of the century. The contrast will be more striking if we look at the fact that, in 1851, the population of Cheshire and Lancashire nearly doubled that of the five South-Western Counties, which counties, a century and a half earlier, contained three times as many inhabitants as the North-Western. If we add Gloucestershire to the other five counties, we shall find that these six chief counties of the West at the beginning of the eighteenth century contained 202,167 houses, and therefore above a million ten thousand inhabitants. At the same period, Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland only contained 209,132 houses, and therefore these great Northern counties only exceeded the West in population by about thirty-five thousand souls. In 1851 these five Northern Counties contained five millions of inhabitants, being an excess above the six Western Counties of two million seven hundred thousand. "Parliamentary History," vol. v. Appendix No. 10. The principle of assigning five persons to a house is sometimes observed; sometimes, six persons; and sometimes a medium between the two. § The Assessment was doubled in 1693, but the proportions were the same. 4 THE WOOLLEN MANUFACTURES. [1689-1714. In the first year of the new dynasty an Act was passed "for the better preventing the exportation of Wool, and encouraging the Woollen Manufacture of this kingdom." The great object of commercial legislation for two centuries was to encourage the Woollen Manufacture. The one mode of accomplishing this was to prevent the exportation of Wool, and to prohibit the importation of textile articles from every other country, not excepting Scotland and Ireland. Wool was justly held to be "eminently the foundation of England's riches." To let wool go away unwrought, or even in the shape of yarn, was to lessen or destroy this source of wealth. But the richer Dutch, especially, could give a better price for the wool than the English clothiers; and, said the first political economist of that time, "they that can give the best price for a commodity shall never fail to have it, by one means or other, notwithstanding the opposition of any laws by sea or land; of such force, subtilty, and violence is the general course of trade."‡ Under the Statute of the first year of William and Mary, Commissioners were appointed to prevent by forcible means the exportation of Wool. They employed a sloop and boats for the search of vessels. They had an army of riding-officers and superiors in the wool-growing counties and adjacent ports. The contests between these riding-officers and the carriers of wool were frequent and sometimes deadly; and the aggregate number of packs rescued from the officers was greater than the number seized. The service was most inefficient and dangerous in the North. § The landed interest and the manufacturing interest were for years at issue upon the question of the exportation of wool. The manufacturers desired a monopoly. The landlords and cultivators advocated a perfectly open trade, and proclaimed the most liberal principles of commercial freedom. Such is the varying course of opinion which follows the varying interests of industrial operations. The economical writers of the end of the seventeenth century, who estimated the whole annual income of England at forty-three millions, and the rental at ten millions, reckoned the annual value of wool at two millions, and the annual value of the woollen manufacture at eight millions. That manufacture was chiefly in the Western Counties, as it had been from the time of Edward VI. In that reign, though Coventry and Worcester produced "White Cloths" and "Coloured Cloths;" though the "Coloured Long Cloths" of Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex were worthy of mention, as well as "Northern Cloths" and "Welsh Friezes ; Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, Devonshire, were especially famous for their "Whites" and " Reds," their "Azures" and "Blues." "Devonshire Kerseys," and "Broadcloths called Tauntons and Bridgewaters," were the objects of minute regulation. "Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire Cottons "" - (a fabric so called in which cotton is held to have had no place)-and "Manchester Rugs and Friezes" form a small object of that legislative vigilance which was to insure "the true making of cloth within this realm," and to prevent the "many subtil sleights and untruths" which were imputed to greedy clothiers. || A hundred and fifty years later the West was still the great Cloth-making district; and to * 1 Gul. and Mar. c. 32. Sir Josiah Child. § Returns given in Smith's "Memoirs of Wool," vol. ii. p. 166. 5 & 6 Edward VI. c. 6. + Ibid. |