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towards GOD and my neighbour.

We know that

there is only one way to the favour of GOD, even the SAVIOUR Who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life;" and that "no man cometh to the FATHER but by Him." For His sake, let us be ready to suffer reproach, in a cause which, I believe, He has owned and blessed in an especial manner, and will further own and bless. There are many, also, who object to the use of alcohol even as a medicine: but surely, this is an extreme and dangerous position to assume.

We are convinced that a determined protest will ere long be uttered from the lips of every good man and true, against any government which shall draw its revenues from the vices of the people; which shall strive to maintain a precarious existence from the annual consumption of its bone and sinew. Oh! that our people were wise! that they would only understand what their true interests are! that they would discern their friends from their enemies, on this question, fraught with such pregnant influence on their temporal and eternal destinies!

I believe that the chariot of Temperance is accelerating its pace, and that it is diffusing blessings unnumbered in its course. GOD speed it! He will speed it; for our cause is His cause. He knoweth that it is because we will not have our GoD dishonoured, and our fellow-man degraded below the level of the brute, that we band ourselves together in this glorious reformation. And never shall we cease from the conflict, till, in the power of Him that is Mighty, we remove from our country the Liquor Traffic, that gigantic obstacle to "the blessed Gospel of the grace of God."

TRADE AND COMMERCE,

THE AUXILIARIES OF CIVILISATION AND COMFORT.

[Prepared for and Read at the Meeting of the British Association in Leeds, October, 1858.]

BY THOMAS BAZLEY, Esq.,

Author of "The Labour of Life," in the "Popular Lecturer" for 1857, &c.

Now, as of old, industry is the source whence proceed the supplies of the innumerable products of nature, and of manufacturing art. The present age is distinguished not only by an amazing increase in the articles which result from the cultivation of the earth and the skill of the artisan, but new powers of production having been discovered, augmented supplies of all things necessary to the existence of the human family, as well as of those which can adorn and gratify, now yield their comforts and embellishments, and have consequently called for a correspondingly extended distribution. Happily, these beneficial agents, production and distribution, have coexistently contributed to the visible results of modern industry; and this, therefore, is pre-eminently a practical age.

Philosophers, theorists, and inventors, have been prolific indicators of improvements; but till Watt and his successors combined the principles of science with the skill of the artisan, and demonstrated by the subjugation of manufacturing difficulties, and by the contrivance of mechanical agents, which became

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working benefactors, the stores of knowledge were only first largely partaken of. Stores of learning

and of science have smouldered in the libraries of their possessors; great multitudes of people in every country have been subjected to the darkening influences of ignorance, though in slow and certain progress the elements of a new development were advancing; and the test of practical utility now determines the merit of philosophic suggestions; whilst the emanations of the untaught, whose experience as workmen has led them to invent and improve, are perfected by the superior application of mental skill, guided by true and enduring principles.

Domestic and mere hand labours were the burthens borne alike in every large community, and in the households of the rustic cottage or stately mansion; the distaff and spindle, producing home-spun woollen or flaxen yarns; the shuttle with the hand-loom, and the knitting-needle, being the implements employed to supply family wants. About the middle of the eighteenth century, however, the whisperings of intelligence began to tell of magic wonders which water and steam power, with manufacturing appliances to arise from new mechanical contrivances, should produce: and then opened that remarkable era which called coals and metals from the mines to minister to the formation of a gigantic manufacturing system; when domestic industry was proved to be inadequate to provide for those new wants which increased knowledge and refined desires showed their possessors that they required, and which might be gratified with benefit to extending industry. Manufacturing establishments became signs of progress; employment and consumption equally increased; migration of labourers to districts needing additional hands took place; wages were more extensively paid; expenditure from enlarged earnings fructified by fostering new demands for the necessaries of life, thus widening the foundation on which the new

structure of industry should be erected; and the application of mechanical power having led to a vast increase in all the productions which could contribute to the comforts of life, machinery was proved to be creative, and not destructive, of beneficial labour.

The rise and progress of the cotton trade will probably best confirm and support these views,-which are indeed applicable to every branch of national industry. The growth of cotton is indigenous in those countries which border on the tropical regions. From time immemorial cotton has been grown and manufactured in the East Indies; and no doubt three thousand years ago the Hindoo wore garments made from this material, not dissimilar to the cotton clothing now supplied from places then unknown, and where the cotton plant cannot thrive, but which industry and machinery have rendered practically the homes of the greatest modern occupations. Asia and Africa were the earliest fields whence cotton was gathered; and though Turkey in Europe, Spain, the Isles of Greece, and the South of Italy, have in the middle ages grown cotton, for the United States of America was reserved its latest introduction, most extended cultivation, and vastly the largest production. Some seventy years ago, the seed of cotton was first imported into America and sown; and when its planter beheld with delight his few acres of ground white with the downy harvest, he exclaimed, with foreboding alarm, "This cotton may be made into more stockings than the world needs," yet its value would not exceed £100; whilst, since then, in the very short period of its production in that country, so vast has been its increase, that £40,000,000 sterling may be estimated as the worth of the last year's yield.

Probably from the most remote ages the arts of spinning and weaving were practised by the human hand. In patriarchal times needlework was highly

esteemed; and in every subsequent period this useful accomplishment has been possessed by women of the highest rank, and by those resident in courts, as also by the squaw of the rude Indian, and by the domestic housewife of every country. But to modern efforts must be attributed, as exemplified in the cotton trade, those enormously large productions of the textile fabrics-whether of the plain and useful, or of the fanciful and ornamental-which have placed alike in palaces and cottages comforts and decorations to which the ancients were strangers.

In 1758, the imports of cotton, and its consump tion by domestic labour, might be three millions of pounds weight for the entire year; but in the present year, a century afterwards, the quantity will be one thousand millions, of which the United States of America supply three-fifths, the other two-fifths being obtained from the East Indies, South America, Egypt, and the West Indies. For the last year, by the return made by the Board of Trade, the exports of manufactures in cotton sent to every part of the world, amounted to upwards of £39,000,000 sterling: hence this large sum becomes an agent of payment to a corresponding extent of imports; but in thus largely aiding in procuring increased supplies of foreign products-whether in gold, silver, raw materials, food, wines, sugars, fruits, or luxuries of distant growth, which are received into the United Kingdom, there is the satisfaction that our cotton industry has contributed clothing comforts to the benefit alike of the savage and the civilised in every region of the earth. In this current year the exports of cotton manufactures will probably amount to £40,000,000, and the value left for home consumption may be £24,000,000, or equal to 17s. per head for the population of this country; but as the cotton trade of Great Britain is not half its extent in the entire world, including the domestic and semi-domestic manufacture still extensively carried on in the

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