hematical nicety. Some of these tools for
planing, boring, rivetting, welding, cutting iron and other metals, are to be
found in great iron manufactories. Indeed, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Whitworth are
of a class of men who have proved that the execution of almost all imitations
of natural mechanics are merely a question of comparative expense. If you
choose to pay for it, you may have the moving fingers of a man, or the
prehensile trunk of an elephant, perfectly executed.

From the manufacture of machines, the next step lies naturally to some branch
of cotton manufactures.

COTTON.--The rise of this manufacture has been wonderfully rapid. In the time
of Henry VIII., the spinning wheel came into use in England, superseding the
spindle and distaff, which may still be seen in the south of France and
Italy, and in India, where no other tools are used. In the same reign
Manchester became distinguished for its manufactures.

In the seventeenth century, Humphrey Chetham, whose name has already been
mentioned as the founder of a splendid charity, was among the eminent
tradesmen.

The barbarities of the Duke of Alva on the Protestants of the Netherlands,
and the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by which the persecutions of the
French Protestants was renewed, supplied all our manufacturing districts with
skilful Artisans and mechanics in silk and woollen.

In 1786, the importation of raw cotton only amounted to nineteen million
pounds weight, obtained from the West Indies, the French, Spanish, and Dutch
colonies, and from Turkey and Smyrna. Two years previously an American ship
which imported eight bags was seized, on the ground that so much cotton could
not be the produce of the United States!

So early as 1738, one Charles Wyatt, of Birmingham, took out a patent for
spinning yarn by machinery, which he tried at Northampton, but reaped no
profits from the invention, which was discontinued and forgotten. In 1767,
James Hargreaves, an illiterate weaver residing near Church, in Lancashire,
who seven years previously had invented a carding machine, much like that in
use at the present day, invented the spinning jenny,--by which eighty spindles
were set to work instead of the one of the spinning wheel. Hargreaves
derived no benefit from his invention; twice a mob of spinners on the old
principle rose and destroyed all the machinery made on his plan, and chased
him away. In 1769, Richard Arkwright took out his first patent