CHAP. buy their cotton, and who, after carrying it 5,000 miles to be manufactured, carry back the goods to them.'1 I. Linen. Silk. If Great Britain entirely monopolised the woollen and the cotton trades, she had done her best, in her own way, to promote the manufacture of linen in Ireland. In 1698, Parliament, while rigorously prohibiting the exportation of Irish woollen goods, sedulously attempted to encourage the linen manufacture in Ireland. Bounties were paid on all linen goods imported into this country from the sister island; and the great linen trade acquired, especially in Ulster, the importance which it still retains. In 1800, 31,978,039 yards of linen were exported from Ireland to Great Britain, and 2,585,829 yards to other countries. In 1815, the export trade had risen to 37,986,359 and 5,496,206 yards respectively. A formidable rival to Ulster was, however, slowly rising in another part of the kingdom. At the close of the great French war, Dundee was still an insignificant manufacturing town, but the foundations were already laid of the surprising supremacy which she has since acquired in the linen trade. Some 3,000 tons of flax were imported into the Scotch port in 1814. But the time was rapidly coming when the shipments of linen from this single place were to exceed those from all Ireland, and Dundee was to be spoken of by professed economists as the Manchester of the linen trade.2 The silk manufacturers of Britain have never yet succeeded in acquiring the predominance which the woollen, cotton, and linen factors have virtually obtained. The worm, by which the raw material is produced, has never been acclimatised on a large scale in England; and the trade has naturally flourished chiefly in those countries where the worm could live and spin, or where the raw material could be the most easily procured. Insular 1 McCulloch's Commercial Dict., ad verb. Cotton. 2 McCulloch, ad verb. Linen; Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 230. prejudice, moreover, should not induce the historian to forget another reason which has materially interfered with the development of this particular trade. The ingenuity of the British was superior to that of every other nation; but the taste of the British was inferior to that of most people. An article, which was only worn by the rich, and which was only used for its beauty and delicacy, was naturally produced most successfully by the most artistic people. English woollen goods found their way to every continental nation; but the wealthy English imported their finest lustrings and à la modes from Italy and France. The silk trade would, in fact, have hardly found a home in England at all had it not been for the folly of a neighbouring potentate. Louis XIV., in a disastrous hour for France, revoked the Edict of Nantes; and the French Huguenots, to their eternal honour, preferring their consciences to their country, sought a home amidst a more liberal people. The silk weavers of France settled in Spitalfields, and the British silk trade gained rapidly on its foreign rivals. Parliament adopted the usual clumsy contrivances to promote an industry whose importance it was no longer possible to ignore. Prohibitory duties, designed to discourage the importation of foreign silk, were imposed by the legislature; monopolies were granted to successful throwsters, and every precaution was taken, which the follies of protection could suggest, to perpetuate the supremacy which Great Britain was gradually acquiring in the silk trade. The usual results followed this short-sighted policy. Prohibitory duties encouraged smuggling. Foreign silk found its way into England, and the revenue was defrauded accordingly. The English trade began to decline, and Parliament again interfered to promote its prosperity. In that unhappy period of English history, which succeeds the fall of Chatham and precedes the rise of Pitt, Parliament adopted fresh expedients to promote the prosperity of the silk CHAP. I. CHAP. I. Steam. trade. Prohibitory duties were replaced with actual prohibition, and elaborate attempts were made to regulate the wages of the Spitalfields weavers. The natural consequences ensued. Smuggling, which had been created by prohibitive duties, flourished with fresh vitality under the influence of actual prohibition. The capitalists transferred their mills from Spitalfields, where the labours of their workmen were fixed by law, to Macclesfield and other places, where master and workman were free to make their own terms. The silk trade was hardly being developed with the same rapidity as the three other textile industries. But silk, like wool, cotton, and linen, was affording a considerable amount of employment to a constantly growing population. The textile industries of this country could not indeed have acquired the importance, which they have since obtained, if the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Cartwright had not been supplemented by the labours of explorers in another field. Machinery makes possible what man by manual labour alone would find it impossible to perform. But machinery would be an useless incumbrance were it not for the presence of some motive power. From the earliest ages men have endeavoured to supplement the brute force of animals with the more powerful forces which nature has placed at their disposal. The ox was not to be perpetually used to tread out the corn; women were not always to pass their days laboriously grinding at a mill. The movement of the atmosphere, the flow of running water, were to be taken into alliance with man; and the invention of windmills and water-mills was to mark an advance in the onward march of civilisation. But air and water, mighty forces as they are, proved but fickle and uncertain auxiliaries. When the wind was too low its strength was insufficient to turn the cumbrous sails of the mill; when it was too high it deranged the complicated machinery of the miller. The miller who trusted to water was hardly more fortunate than the man who relied upon air. A summer drought reduced the power of his wheel at the very time when long days and fine weather made him anxious to accomplish the utmost possible amount of work. A flood swept away the dam on which his mill depended for its supply of water. An admirable auxiliary during certain portions of each year, water was occasionally too strong, occasionally too weak, for the purposes of the miller. The manufacturing industry of the country stood, therefore, in need of a new motive power; and invention, which is supposed by some thinkers to depend like other commodities on the laws of demand and supply, was busily elaborating a new problem-the use of a novel power, which was to revolutionise the world. The elasticity of hot water had long been noticed, and, for a century and a half before the period of this history, a few advanced thinkers had been speculating on the possibility of utilising the expansive powers of steam. The Marquis of Worcester had described, in his Century of Inventions,' 'an admirable and most forcible way to drive up water by means of fire.' Steam was actually used early in the eighteenth century as a motive power for pumping water from mines; and Newcomen, a blacksmith in Dartmouth, invented a tolerably efficient steam engine. It was not, however, till 1769 that James Watt, a native of Greenock, and a mathematical instrument maker in Glasgow, obtained his first patent for methods of lessening the consumption of steam, and consequently of fuel, in fireengines.' James Watt was born in 1736. His father was a magistrate, and had the good sense to encourage the turn for mechanics which his son displayed at a very early age. At the age of nineteen Watt was placed with a mathematical instrument maker in London. But a feeble health, which had interfered with his studies as a boy, prevented him from pursuing his avocations in England. CHAP. I. CHAP. I. Watt returned to his native country. The Glasgow body of Arts and Trades, however, refused to allow him to exercise his calling within the limits of their jurisdiction; and had it not been for the University of Glasgow, which befriended him in his difficulty, and appointed him their mathematical instrument maker, the career of one of the greatest geniuses, whom Great Britain has produced, would have been stinted at its outset. There happened to be in the University a model of Newcomen's engine. It happened, too, that the model was defectively constructed. Watt, in the ordinary course of his business, was asked to remedy its defects, and he soon succeeded in doing so. But his examination of the model convinced him of serious faults in the original. Newcomen had injected cold water into the cylinder in order to condense the steam and thus obtain a necessary vacuum for the piston to work in. Watt discovered that three fourths of the fuel which the engine consumed were required to reheat the cylinder. It occurred to him that, if the condensation could be performed in a separate vessel, communicating with the cylinder, the latter could be kept hot while the former was cooled, and the vapour arising from the injected water could also be prevented from impairing the vacuum. The communication could easily be effected by a tube, and the water could be pumped out. This is the first and the grand invention by which he at once saved three fourths of the fuel, and increased the power one fourth, thus making every pound of coal produce five times the force formerly obtained from it.' But Watt was not satisfied with this single improvement. He introduced steam above as well as below the piston, and thus again increased the power of the machine. He discovered the principle of parallel motion, and thus made the piston move in a true straight line. He regulated the supply of water to the boiler 1 Lord Brougham's Men of Letters and Science, p. 367. |