Not caught Ermao net

Worcester 8,000 11-12,000c 40,422

a. Macaulay's History of England c. 3. b. Defoe's Tour (1725) c. Arthur Young (1769) d. Macpherson's Annals of Commerce (1769) e. Levi's History of British Commerce f. Eden's State of the Poor (1797) g. The Returns for 1881 are those of the parliamentary district.

Another point to be considered is the relation of rural to urban population. According to Gregory King, writing in 1696, London contained 530,000 inhabitants, other cities and market-towns, 870,000, while villages and hamlets numbered 4,100,000. Arthur Young, seventy years later, calculated that London contained one-sixth of the whole population, and remarked that, 'in flourishing countries,' as England, 'the half of a nation is found in towns.' Both estimates are very unreliable, apart from the fact that both, and especially that of Arthur Young, overestimate the total number of the population, but the contrast between them justly indicates the tendency of towns even then to grow out of proportion to the rural districts. That disproportion has, of course, become even more marked since Arthur Young's day. In 1881 the total urban population was 17,285,026, or 66.6 per cent, while the rural was 8,683,026, or 33.3 per cent. The only estimates of occupations with which I am acquainted are again those of Gregory King in 1696, and Arthur Young in 1769. They are too vague, and too inconsistent with one another, to be relied on, but I give them for what they are worth. According to the former, freeholders and their families numbered 940,000, farmers and their families, 750,000, labouring people and out servants, 1,275,000, cottagers and paupers, 1,300,000; making a total agricultural population of 4,265,000, against only 240,000 artisans and handicraftsmen. Arthur Young estimates the number of different classes as follows:-

Farmers (whether freeholders or leaseholders), their servants and labourers............... 2,800,000 Manufacturers of all kinds................. 3,000,000 Landlords and their dependents, fishermen and miners................................... 800,000 Persons engaged in commerce.................. 200,000 Non-industrious poor......................... 500,000 Clergy and lawyers........................... 200,000 Civil servants, army and navy................ 500,000

Total..................................... 8,500,000

But the number set down to manufactures here is probably as much too high. In proportion to the total population, as the total itself is in excess of the fact.

In describing the agriculture of the time the first point of importance is the proportion of cultivated land to waste. Gregory King, who rather overestimated the total acreage of England and Wales, put the arable land at 11,000,000 acres, pasture and meadow at 10,000,000, houses, gardens, orchards, etc., at 1,000,000, being a total of 22,000,000 acres of cultivated land, or nearly three-fifths of the whole country. A land-agent in 1727 believed one-half of the country to be waste. Arthur Young, writing fifty years later, puts the cultivated area at a much higher figure. Estimating the total acreage of England alone at 54,000,000 acres, he considered that 52,000,000 of these were in arable and pasture, in equal proportions. One or other of the two first-mentioned estimates is certainly nearer the truth than the last. The exact proportion is, however, impossible to determine. There is no respect in which the agricultural England of today differs more from that of the period which we are considering, than in the greatly reduced amount of common land, The enclosure of commons had been going on for centuries before 1760, but with nothing like the rapidity with which it has been going on since, it is known that 554,974 acres were enclosed between 1710 and 1760, while nearly 7,000,000 were enclosed between 1760 and 1845.4 At the beginning of the latter period a large proportion of this land, since enclosed, was under the primitive tillage of the common-fields. Throughout considerable districts the agrarian system of the middle ages still existed in full force. Some parishes had no common or waste lands belonging to them, but where common lands were cultivated, one and the same plan was generally pursued. The arable land of each village was divided into three great stripes subdivided by 'baulks' three yards wide. Every farmer would own at least one piece of land in each field, and all were bound to follow the customary tillage. One strip was left fallow every year; on the other two were grown wheat and barley; sometimes oats, pease, or tares were substituted for the latter. The meadows were also held in common. Up to hay harvest, indeed, every man had his own plot, but, while in the arable land the plots rarely changed hands, in the meadows the different shares were apportioned by lot every year, After hay-harvest the fences in the meadow land were thrown down, and all householders had common rights of grazing on it. Similarly the stubbles were grazed, but here the right was rarely open to all. Every farmer had the right of pasture on the waste. Though these common fields contained the best soil in the kingdom, they exhibited the most wretched cultivation. 'Never,' says Arthur Young, 'were more miserable crops seen than all the spring ones in the common fields; absolutely beneath contempt. The causes of this deficient tillage were three in number: (1) The same course of crops was necessary. No proper rotation was feasible; the only possible alternation being to vary the proportions of different white-straw crops. - There were no turnips or artificial grasses, and consequently no sheep-farming on a large scale. Such sheep as there were were miserably small; the whole carcase weighed only 28 lbs., and the fleeces 3 1/2 lbs. each, as against 9 lbs. on sheep in enclosed fields. (2) Much time was lost by labourers and cattle 'in travelling to many dispersed pieces of land from one end of a parish to another.' (3) Perpetual quarrels arose about rights of pasture in the meadows and stubbles, and respecting boundaries; in some fields there were no 'baulks' to divide the plots, and men would plough by night to steal a furrow from their neighbours. For these reasons the connections between the practice of enclosing and improved agriculture was very close. The early enclosures, made under the Statutes of Merton (1235), and Westminster (1285), were taken by the lords of the manor from the waste. But in these uses the lord had first to prove that sufficient pasturage had been left for the commoners; and if rights of common existed independent of the possession of land, no enclosure was permitted. These early enclosures went on steadily, but the enclosures which first attract notice towards the end of the fifteenth century were of a different kind. They were often made on cultivated land, and, if Nasse is correct, they took the form not only of permanent conversions from arable into pasture, but of temporary conversions of arable into pasture, followed by reconversion from pasture into arable. The result was a great increase of produce. The lord having separated his plots from those of his neighbours, and having consolidated them, could pursue any system of tillage which seemed good to him. The alternate and convertible husbandry, mentioned above, was introduced; the manure of the cattle enriched the arable land, and 'the grass crops on the land ploughed up and manured were much stronger and of a better quality than those on the constant pasture.' Under the old system the manure was spread on the ground pasture, while in the enclosures it was used for the benefit of land broken up for tillage. The great enclosures of the sixteenth century took place in Suffolk, Essex, Kent, and Northamptonshire, which were in consequence the most wealthy counties. They were frequent also in Oxford, Berks, Warwickshire, Bedfordshire, Bucks, and Leicestershire, and with similar results. In Arthur Young's time Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent were the best cultivated parts of England. Taking a general view of the state of agriculture in 1760, we find that improvements were confined to a few parts of the country. The first enclosure Bill (1710) was to legalise the enclosure of a parish in Hampshire. I have looked through twelve of these Bills of the reign of George I, and I find that they applied to parishes in Derbyshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, Wilts, Warwickshire, and Norfolk. But though enclosures were thus widely distributed, certain counties continued to bear a much higher reputation than others, and in some improvements were confined to one or two parishes, and not spread over a wide district. The best cultivated counties were those which had long been enclosed. Kent, which was spoken of by William Stafford in 1581 as a county where much of the land was enclosed, is described by Arthur Young as having 'long been reckoned the best cultivated in England.'... 'It must astonish strangers,' he says, 'to East Kent and Thanet, to find such numbers of common farmers that have more drilled crops than broadcast ones, and to see them so familiar with drill-ploughs and horse-hoes. The drill culture carried on in so complete a manner is the great peculiarity of this country.... Hops are extremely well cultivated.' Is in, another passage he says that Kent and Hertfordshire 'have the reputation of a very accurate cultivation.' The Marquis of Rockingham brought a Hertfordshire farmer to teach his tenants in the West Riding to hoe turnips. The husbandry both of that district and of the East Riding was very backward. The courses of crops, and the general management of the arable land were very faulty; very few of the farmers hoed turnips, and those who did executed the work in so slovenly a way that neither the crop nor the land was the least the better for it; beans were never hoed at all. The husbandry of Northumberland, on the other hand, was much superior to that of Durham and Yorkshire. Turnips were hoed, manure was better managed, and potatoes were cultivated on a large scale. Essex, held up by Tusser in the reign of Elizabeth as an example of the advantages of enclosures, and described by Young in 1807 as having 'for ages been an enclosed country,' is mentioned as early as 1694 as a county where 'some have their fallow after turnips, which feed their sheep in winter,' - the first mention of turnips as a field crop. But the greatest progress in the first half of the eighteenth century seems to have taken place in Norfolk. Every one has heard of Townshend growing turnips at Raynham, after his quarrel with Walpole; and Young, writing in 1812, after speaking of the period 1700-1760 as one of stagnation, owing to low prices ('it is absolutely vain to expect improvements in agriculture unless prices are more disposed to rise than to remain long without variations that give encouragement to the farmer'), admits that the improvements made in Norfolk during that time were an exception, in his Eastern Tour (1770), he had spoken of the husbandry 'which has rendered the name of this county so famous in the rming world". and given seven reasons for the improvements. These were: (1) Enclosing without assistance of Parliament. Parliamentary enclosure 'through the knavery of commissioners and attorneys,' was very expensive. 'Undoubtedly many of the finest loams on the richest marls would at this day have been sheep-walks had there been any right o* commonage on them.' (2) Marling, for there was plenty of marl under the sand everywhere; (3) An excellent rotation of crops-the famous Norfolk four years' course of turnips, barley, clover (or clover and rye-grass), and wheat; (4) The culture of turnips well hand-hoed; (5) The culture of clover and rye-grass; (6) The granting of long leases; (7) The division of the county chiefly into large farms. 'Great farms,' he says, 'have been the soul of the Norfolk culture, though in the eastern part of the county there were little occupiers of *100 a year. Throughout the whole of the South of England, however, there had been a certain amount of progress. Hoeing turnips, according to Young, was common in many parts of the south of the kingdom, although the extensive use of turnips - i.e. all their uses for fattening cattle as well as feeding lean sheep - 'is known but little of, except in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex.' Clover husbandry, on the other hand, was 'universal from the North of England to the further end of Glamorganshire.' Clover, the 'great clover,' had been introduced into England by Sir Richard Weston about 1645, as had probably been turnips also. Potatoes at the beginning of the century were only garden crops. Hemp and flax were frequently grown, as were also hops, which had been introduced in the beginning of the sixteenth century. If we turn from the cultivation of the soil to the management and breeding of live stock, we shall find that no great progress had been made in this branch during the years 1700-1760. Davenant in 1700 estimated the net carcase of black cattle at 370 lb., and of a sheep at 28 lb. A century later Eden calculated that 'bullocks now killed in London weigh, at an average, 800 lb., sheep 80 lb., and lambs about 50 lb. each". and Young in 1786 put the weight of bullocks and sheep at 840 lb. and 100 lb. respectively. But this improvement seems to have come about after 1760. It was not until 1760-85 that Bakewell perfected the new breed of sheep - the Leicesters - and improved the breed of long-horned cattle, and that the brothers Culley obtained the short-horn, or Durham cattle, from the breed in the valley of the Tees. Some improvements in the breed of sheep, however, had already been made. 'The wool of Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, and Rutland, with some parts of Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk has been accounted the longest and finest combing wool. But of late years' (this was written in 1739) 'there have been improvements made in the breed of sheep by changing or rams and sowing of turnips and grass seeds, and now there is some large fine combing wool to be found in most counties in England, which is fine, long, and soft, fit to make all sorts of fine stuff and hose of.' Still improvements in feeding sheep were by no means universally adopted for half a century later. Agricultural implements, too, were still very primitive, wooden ploughs being commonly in use, while the small, narrow-wheeled waggon of the North held 40 or 50 bushels with difficulty. Arthur Young constantly attributes much of the bad agriculture to the low rentals prevalent. 'Of so little encouragement to them,' he writes of the farmers of Cleveland, 'is the lowness of their rents, that many large tracts of land that yielded good crops of corn within thirty years are now overrun with whins, brakes, and other trumpery.... If I be demanded how such ill courses are to be stopped, I answer, Raise their rents. First with moderation, and if that does not bring forth industry, double them.' At the same time Young strongly advocated long leases. But it must be remembered that besides tenant farmers there were still a large number of freeholders and still more copyholders either for life or by inheritance. On the whole, though the evidence on some points is somewhat contradictory, the progress of agriculture between 1700 and 1760 may be said to have been slow. Writing in 1770 Arthur Young ascribes to the last ten years 'more experiments, more discoveries, and more general good sense displayed in the walk of agriculture than in an hundred preceding ones.' Though drill-husbandry was practised by Jethro Tull, 'a gentleman of Berkshire,' as early as 1701, and his book was published in 1731, 'he seems to have had few followers in England for more than thirty years,' and Young in 1770 speaks of 'the new husbandry' as having sunk with Tull, and 'not again put in motion till within a few years.' On the other hand, we have as early as 1687 Petty's notice of 'the draining of fens, watering of dry grounds, and improving of forests and commons.' Macpherson in the year 1729 speaks of the great sums lately expended in the enclosing and improving of lands; and Laurence in 1727 asserts that 'it is an undoubted truth that the Art of Husbandry is of late years greatly improved, and accordingly many estates have already admitted their utmost improvement, but,' he adds, 'much the greater number still remains of such as are so far from being brought to that perfection that they have felt few or none of the effects of modern arts and experiments.' Still, in spite of the ignorance and stupidity of the farmers and their use of wretched implements, the average produce of wheat was large. In 1770 it was twenty-five bushels to the acre, when in France it was only eighteen. At the beginning of the century some of our colonies imported wheat from the mother country. The average export of grain from 1697 to 1765 was nearly 500,000 quarters, while the imports came to a very small figure. The exports were sent to Russia, Holland, and America.

Among the manufactures of the time the woollen business was by far the most important. 'All our measures,' wrote Bishop Berkeley in 1737, 'should tend towards the immediate encouragement of our woollen manufactures, which must be looked upon as the basis of our wealth.' In 1701 our woollen exports were worth *2,000,000, or 'above a fourth part of the whole export trade.' In 1770 they were worth *4,000,000, or between a third and a fourth of the whole. The territorial distribution of the manufacture was much the same as now. This industry had probably existed in England from an early date. It is mentioned in a law of 1224. In 1331 John Kennedy brought the art of weaving woollen cloth from Flanders into England, and received the protection of the king, who at the same time invited over fullers and dyers. There is extant a petition of the worsted weavers and merchants of Norwich to Edward III in 1348. The coarse cloths of Kendal and the fine cloths of Somerset, Dorset, Bristol, and Gloucester are mentioned in the statutes of the same century. In 1391 we hear of Guildford cloths, and in 1467 of the woollen manufacture in Devonshire-at-Lifton, Tavistock, and Rowburgh. In 1402 the manufacture was settled to a great extent in and near London, but it gradually shifted, owing to the high price of labour and provisions, to Surrey, Kent, Essex, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire, and afterwards still further, into the counties of Dorset, Wilts, Somerset, Gloucester, and Worcester, and even as far as Yorkshire. There were three chief districts in which the woollen trade was carried on about 1760. One of these owed its manufacture to the wars in the Netherlands. In consequence of Alva's persecutions (1567-8) many Flemings settled in Norwich (which had been desolate since Ket's rebellion in 1549), Colchester. Sandwich, Canterbury, Maidstone, and Southampton, The two former towns seem to have benefited most from the skill of these settlers so far as the woollen manufacture was concerned. It was at this time, according to Macpherson, that Norwich 'learned the making of those fine and slight stuffs which have ever since gone by its name,' such as crapes, bombayines, and camblets; while the baiye-makers settled at Colchester and its neighbourhood. The stuffs thus introduced into England were known as the 'new drapery', and included baiye, serges, and other slight woollen goods as distinguished from the 'old drapery,' a term applied to broad cloth, kersies, etc. The chief seats of the West of England manufacture were Bradford in Wilts, the centre of the manufacture of super-fine cloth; Devizes, famous for its serges; Warminster and Frome, with their fine cloth; Trowbridge; Stroud, the centre of the dyed-cloth manufactures; and Taunton, which in Defoe's time possessed 1100 looms. The district reached from Cirencester in the north to Sherborne in the south, and from Witney in the east to Bristol in the west, being about fifty miles in length where longest, and twenty in breadth where narrowest - 'a rich enclosed country,' as Defoe says, 'full of rivers and towns, and infinitely populous, insomuch that some of the market towns are equal to cities in bigness, and superior to many of them in numbers of people.' It was a 'prodigy of a trade,' and the 'fine Spanish medley cloths' which this district produced were worn by 'all the persons of fashion in England.' It was no doubt the presence of streams and the Cotswold wool which formed the attractions of the district. A branch of the industry extended into Devon, where the merchants of Exeter bought in a rough state the serges made in the country round, to dye and finish them for home consumption or export. The third chief seat of the manufacture was the West Riding of Yorkshire, where the worsted trade centred round Halifax, which, according to Camden, began to manufacture about 1537; and where Leeds and its neighbourhood manufactured a coarse cloth of English wool. In 1574 the manufacturers of the West Riding made 56,000 pieces of broad cloth and 72,000 of narrow. It will be seen from this short survey that, however greatly the production of these different districts may have changed in proportion since 1760, the several branches of the trade are even now distributed very much as they were then, the West Riding being the headquarters of the worsted and coarse cloth trade, while Norwich still keeps the crape industry, and the West manufactures fine cloth. The increased demand for English wool consequent upon the extension of this industry led to large enclosures of land, especially in Northamptonshire, Rutlandshire, Leicestershire, and Warwickshire, which counties supplied most of the combing wools used for worsted stuffs and stockings; but parts of Huntingdon, Bedford, Bucks, Cambridgeshire, Romney Marsh, and Norfolk competed with them, and by 1739 most counties produced the fine combing wool. Defoe mentions the sale of wool from Lincolnshire, 'where the longest staple is found, the sheep of those parts being of the largest breed". and in Arthur Young's time Lincolnshire and Leicestershire wools were still used at Norwich. The Cotswold and Isle of Wight sheep yielded clothing or short wools, 'but they were inferior to the best Spanish wools,' and could not 'enter into the composition without spoiling and degrading in some degree the fabric of the cloth.' Consequently in the West of England, occupied as it was with the production of the finest cloths, Spanish wool was largely used, though shortly before Young's time it was discovered that 'Norfolk sheep yielded a wool about their necks equal to the best from Spain.' Next in importance was the iron trade, which was largely carried on, though by this time a decaying industry, in the Weald of Sussex, where in 1740 there were ten furnaces, producing annually 1400 tons. The trade had reached its chief extent in the seventeenth century, but in 1724 was still the principal manufacturing interest of the county. The balustrades which surround St. Paul's were cast at Lamberhurst, and their weight, including the seven gates, is above 200 tons. They cost *11,000. Gloucestershire, Shropshire, and Yorkshire had each six furnaces. In the latter county, which boasted an annual produce of 1400 tons, the most famous works were at Rotherham. There were also great ironworks at Newcastle. In 1755 an ironmaster named Anthony Bacon had got a lease for ninety-nine years of a district eight miles in length, by five in breadth, at Merthyr-Tydvil, upon which he erected iron and coal works. In 1709 the Coalbrookdale works in Shropshire were founded, and in 1760 Carron iron was first manufactured in Scotland. Altogether, there were about 1737 fifty-nine furnaces in eighteen different counties, producing 17,350 tons annually. It has been computed that we imported 20,000 tons. In 1881 we exported 3,820,315 tons of iron and steel, valued at *27,590,908, and imported to the value of *3,705,332. The cotton trade was still so insignificant as to be mentioned only once, and that incidentally by Adam Smith. It was confined to Lancashire, where its headquarters were Manchester and Bolton. In 1760 not more than 40,000 persons were engaged in it, and the annual value of the manufactures was estimated at *600,000. The exports, however, were steadily growing; in 1701 they amounted to *23,253, in 1751 to *45,986, in 1764 to *200,354. Burke about this time spoke of 'that infinite variety of admirable manufactures that grow and extend every year among the spirited, inventive, and enterprising traders of Manchester.' But even in 1764 our exports of cotton were still only one-twentieth of the value of the wool exports. The hardware trade then as now was located chiefly in Sheffield and Birmingham, the latter town employing over 50,000 people in that industry. The business, however, was not so much concentrated as now, and there were small workshops scattered about the kingdom. 'Polished steel,' for instance, was manufactured at Woodstock, locks in South Staffordshire, pins at Warrington, Bristol, and Gloucester, where they were 'the staple of the city.' The hosiery trade, too, was as yet only in process of concentration. By 1800 the manufacture of silk hosiery had centred in Derby, that of woollen hosiery in Leicester, though Nottingham had not yet absorbed the cotton hosiery. But at the beginning of the century there were still many looms round London, and in other parts of the South of England. In 1750 London had 1000 frames, Surrey 350, Nottingham 1500, Leicester 1000, Derby 200, other places in the Midlands, 7300; other English and Scotch towns, 1850; Ireland, 800; Total, 14,000. Most of the silk was woven in Spitalfields, but first spun in the North at Stockport, Knutsford, Congleton, and Derby. In 1770 there was a silk-mill at Sheffield on the model of Derby, and a manufactory of waste silk at Kendal. Coventry had already, in Defoe's time, attracted the ribbon business. In 1721 the silk manufacture was said to be worth *700,000 a yew more than at the Revolution. Linen was an ancient manufacture in England, and had been introduced into Dundee at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1746 the British Linen Company was incorporated to supply Africa and the American plantations with linen made at home, and Adam Smith considered it a growing manufacture. It was, of course, the chief manufacture of Ireland, where it had been further developed by French Protestants, who settled there at the end of the seventeenth century. The mechanical arts were still in a very backward state. In spite of the fact that the woollen trade was the staple industry of the country, the division of labour in it was in Adam Smith's time 'nearly the same as it was a century before, and the machinery employed not very different.' According to the same author there had been only three inventions of importance since Edward IV's reign: the exchange of the rock and spindle for the spinning-wheel; the use of machines for facilitating the proper arrangement of the warp and woof before being put into the loom; and the employment of fulling mills for thickening cloth instead of treading it in water. In this enumeration, however, he forgot to mention the fly-shuttle, invented in 1738 by Kay, a native of Bury, in Lancashire, the first of the great inventions which revolutionised the woollen industry. Its utility consisted in its enabling a weaver to do his work in half the time, and making it possible for one man instead of two to weave the widest cloth. 'The machines used in the cotton manufacture,' says Baines, 'were, up to the year 1760, nearly as simple as those of India; though the loom was more strongly and perfectly constructed, and cards for combing the cotton had been adapted from the woollen manufacture. None but the strong cottons, such as fustians and dimities, were as yet made in England, and for these the demand must always have been limited.' In 17S8 John Wyatt invented spinning by rollers, but the discovery never proved profitable. In 1760 the manufacturers of Lancashire began to use the fly-shuttle. Calico printing was already largely developed. The reason why division of labour was carried out to so small an extent, an invention so rare and so little regarded, is given by Adam Smith himself. Division of labour, as he points out, is limited by the extent of the market, and, owing chiefly to bad means of communication, the market for English manufactures was still a very narrow one. Yet England, however slow the development o* her manufactures, advanced nevertheless more rapidly in this respect than other nations. One great secret of her progress lay in the facilities for water-carriage afforded by her rivers, for all communication by land was still in the most neglected condition. A second cause was the absence of internal customs barriers, such as existed in France, and in Prussia until Stein's time. The home trade of England was absolutely free. Arthur Young gives abundant evidence of the execrable state of the roads. It took a week or more for a coach to go from London to Edinburgh. On 'that infernal' road between Preston and Wigan the ruts were four feet deep, and he saw three carts break down in a mile of road. At Warrington the turnpike was 'most infamously bad,' and apparently 'made with a view to immediate destruction.' 'Very shabby,' 'execrable,' 'vile,' 'most execrably vile,' are Young's ordinary comments on the highways. But the water routes for traffic largely made up for the deficiencies of the land routes. Attempts to improve water communication began with deepening the river beds. In 16S5 there was a project for rendering the Avon navigable from its junction with the Severn at Tewkesbury through Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire, but it was abandoned owing to the civil war. From 1660 to 1755 various Acts were passed for deepening the beds of rivers. In 1720 there was an Act for making the Mersey and Irwell navigable between Liverpool and Manchester. About the same time the navigation of the Aire and Calder was opened out. In 1755 the first canal was made, eleven miles in length, near Liverpool. Three years later the Duke of Bridgewater had another constructed om his coal mines at Worsley to Manchester, seven miles distant. Between 1761 and 1766 a still longer one of twenty-nine miles was completed from Manchester through Chester to the Mersey above Liverpool. From this time onwards the canal system spread with great rapidity. When we turn to investigate the industrial organisation of the time, we &nd that the class of capitalist employers was as yet but in its infancy. A large part of our goods were still produced on the domestic system. Manufactures were little concentrated in towns, and only partially separated from agriculture. The 'manufacturer, was, literally, the man who worked with his own hands in his own cottage. Nearly the whole cloth trade of the West Riding, for instance, was organised on this system at the beginning of the century. An important feature in the industrial organisation of the time was the existence of a number of small master-manufacturers, who were entirely independent, having capital and land of their own, for they combined the culture of small freehold pasture-farms with their handicraft. Defoe has left an interesting picture of their life. The land near Halifax, he says, was 'divided into small Enclosures from two Acres to six or seven each, seldom more, every three or four Pieces of Land had an House belonging to them;... hardly an House standing out of a Speaking distance from another;... we could see at every House a Tenter, and on almost every Tenter a piece of Cloth or Kersie or Shaloon.... Every clothier keeps one horse, at least, to carry his Manufactures to the Market; and every one, generally, keeps a Cow or two or more for his Family. By this means the small Pieces of enclosed Land about each house are occupied, for they scarce sow Corn enough to feed their Poultry.... The houses are full of lusty Fellows, some at the Dye-vat, some at the looms, others dressing the Cloths; the women and children carding or spinning; being all employed from the youngest to the oldest.... Not a Beggar to be seen nor an idle person.' This system, however, was no longer universal in Arthur Young's time. That writer found at Sheffield a silk-mill employing 152 hands, including women and children; at Darlington 'one master-manufacturer employed above fifty looms'; at Boyton there were 150 hands in one factory. So, too, in the West of England cloth-trade the germs of the capitalist system were visible. The rich merchant gave out work to labourers in the surrounding villages, who were his employes, and were not independent. In the Nottingham hosiery trade there were, in 1750, fifty manufacturers, known as 'putters out,' who employed 1200 frames; in Leicestershire 1800 frames were so employed. In the hand-made nail business of Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the merchant had warehouses in different parts of the district, and give out nail-rod iron to the nail-master, sufficient for a week's work for him and his family. In Lancashire we can trace, step by step, the growth of the capitalist employer. At first we see, as in Yorkshire, the weaver furnishing himself with warp and weft, which he worked up in his own house and brought himself to market. By degrees he found it difficult to get yarn from the spinners; so the merchants at Manchester gave him out linen warp and raw cotton, and the weaver became dependent on them. Finally, the merchant would get together thirty or forty looms in a town. This was the nearest approach to the capitalist system before the great mechanical inventions. Coming to the system of exchange, we find it based on several different principles, which existed side by side, but which were all, as we should think, very simple and primitive. Each trade had its centre in a provincial town. Leeds, for instance, had its market twice a week, first on the bridge over the Aire, afterwards in the High Street, where, at a later time, two halls were built. Every clothier had his stall, to which he would bring his cloth (seldom more than one piece at a time, owing to the frequency of the markets). At six or seven o'clock a bell rang, and the market began; the merchants and factors came in and made their bargains with the clothiers, and in little more than an hour the whole business was over. By nine the benches were cleared and the hall empty. There was a similar hall at Halifax for the worsted trade. But a large portion of the inland traffic was carried on at fairs, which were still almost as important as in the Middle Ages. The most famous of all was the great fair of Sturbridge, which lasted from the middle of August to the middle of September. Hither came representatives of all the great trades. The merchants of Lancashire brought their goods on a thousand pack-horses; the Eastern counties sent their worsteds, and Birmingham its hardware. An immense quantity of wool was sold, orders being taken by the wholesale dealers of London. In fact, a large part of the home trade found its way to this market. There were also the four great annual fairs, which retained the ancient title of 'marts,' at Lynn, Boston, Gainsborough, and Beverley. The link between these fairs and the chief industrial centres was furnished by travelling merchants. Some would go from Leeds with droves of pack-horses to all the fairs and market-towns throughout England. In the market-towns they sold to the shops; elsewhere they would deal directly with the consumer, like the Manchester merchants, who sent their pack-horses the round of the farmhouses, buying wool or other commodities in exchange for their finished goods. Sometimes the London merchants would come to the manufacturers, paying their guineas down at once, and taking away the purchases themselves. So too in the Birmingham lock trade, chapmen would go round with pack-horses to buy from manufacturers; in the brass trade likewise the manufacturer stayed at home, and the merchant came round with cash in his saddle-bags, and put the brasswork which he purchased into them, though in some cases he would order it to be sent by carrier. Ready cash was essential, for banking was very little developed. The Bank of England existed, but before 1759 issued no notes of less value than *20. By a law of 1709 no other bank of more than six partners was allowed; and in 1750, according to Burke, there were not more than 'twelve bankers' shops out of London.' The Clearing-House was not established till 1775. Hampered as the inland trade was by imperfect communications, extraordinary efforts were made to promote exchange. It is striking to find waste silk from London made into silk-yarn at Kendal and sent back again, or cattle brought from Scotland to Norfolk to be fed. Many districts, however, still remained completely excluded, so that foreign products never reached them at all. Even at the beginning of this century the Yorkshire yeoman, as described by Southey was ignorant of sugar, potatoes, and cotton; the Cumberland dalesman, as he appears in Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes, lived entirely on the produce of his farm. It was this domestic system which the great socialist writers Sismondi and Lassalle had in their minds when they inveighed against the modern organisation of industry. Those who lived under it, they pointed out, though poor, were on the whole prosperous; over-production was absolutely impossible. Yet at the time of which I am speaking, many of the evils which modern Socialists lament were already visible, especially in those industries which produced for the foreign market. Already there were complaints of the competition of men who pushed themselves into the market to take advantage of high prices; already we hear of fluctuations of trade and irregularity of employment. The old simple conditions of production and exchange were on the eve of disappearance before the all-corroding force of foreign trade. The home trade was still indeed much greater in proportion than now; but the exports had grown from about *7,000,000 at the beginning of the century to *14,500,000 in 1760. During that interval great changes had taken place in the channels of foreign commerce. In 1700 Holland was our great market, taking more than one-third of all our exports, but in 1760 the proportion was reduced to about one-seventh. Portugal, which in 1703 took one-seventh, now took only about one-twelfth. The trade with France was quite insignificant. On the other hand, the Colonies were now our chief markets, and a third of our exports went there. In 1770 America took three-fourths of all the manufactures of Manchester. In 1767 the exports to Jamaica were nearly as great as they had been to all the English plantations together in 1704. The shipping trade had doubled, and the ships themselves were larger. In 1732 ships 750 tons were considered remarkable; in 1770 there were many in Liverpool of 900 tons; but in this as in other branches of business progress was still slow, partial, local, thus presenting a striking contrast to the rapid and general advance of the next half-century.