manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated; distant kingdoms have participated in its advantages. The luxurious natives of the East,[1] and the ruder inhabitants of the African desert are alike indebted to our looms. The produce of our factories has preceded even our most enterprising travellers.[2] The cotton of India is conveyed by British ships round half our planet, to be woven by British skill in the factories of Lancashire: it is again set in motion by British capital; and, transported to the very plains whereon it grew, is repurchased by the lords of the soil which gave it birth, at a cheaper price than that at which their coarser machinery enables them to manufacture it themselves.[3]
(3.) The large proportion of the population of this country, who are engaged in manufactures, appears from the following table deduced from a statement in an Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, by the Rev. R. Jones.—
- ↑ "The Bandana handkerchiefs manufactured at Glasgow have long superseded the genuine ones, and are now consumed in large quantities both by the natives and Chinese." Crawfurd's Indian Archipelago, vol. iii. p. 505.
- ↑ Captain Clapperton, when on a visit at the court of the Sultan Bello, states, that "provisions were regularly sent me from the sultan's table on pewter dishes with the London stamp; and I even had a piece of meat served up on a white wash-hand basin of English manufacture." Clapperton's Journey, p. 88.
- ↑ At Calicut, in the East Indies (whence the cotton cloth called calico derives its name), the price of labour is one-seventh of that in England, yet the market is supplied from British looms.
