f the
mutual absurdities by which the woollen manufacturers, on the one hand,
sought to obtain a monopoly of British wool, and the wool growers endeavoured
to secure the exclusive right to supply the raw material. Act after act was
laid upon everything connected with wool, so that it is only extraordinary
that, under such restrictive trammeling, the trade survived at all.

"Odious! In woollen! 'twould a saint provoke!
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke."

In 1781, when, the price of wool being low, the Lincolnshire woolgrowers met
under the chairmanship of their great landowners, and resolved on petitions
praying "that British might be exported and that Irish wool might be excluded
from England;" thereupon the Yorkshire manufacturers met and resolved that
"the exportation of wool would be ruinous to the trade and manufactures of
England," that the manufacturers would be obliged to leave the kingdom for
want of employment, and that the importation of Irish woollen yarn ought to
be interdicted.

The manufacturers were under the impression that no other country than
England could produce the long wools suitable for the manufacture of worsted.

Some time afterwards the woollen manufacturers thought themselves likely to
be ruined by the introduction of cotton cloth, "to the ruin of the staple
trade of the kingdom," and succeeded in placing an excise duty upon the new
fabric.

The contention between sheepowners and manufacturers continued until, in
1824, when the influence of Mr. Huskisson's opinions on trade were beginning
to be felt in Parliament, and to the disgust of both parties, a compromise
was effected by a reduction of all wool duties to a uniform duty of ld. per
lb. on the export of British and importation of foreign wool. The last step
was a total repeal of all duties.

English wools may be divided into long and short staples. The long is used
for worsted, which is finished when it leaves the loom; the short for cloth,
which is compacted together, increased in bulk and diminished in breadth, by
fulling; that is, so beating as to take advantage of the serrated edges of
the wool which lead it to felt together.

Foreign wool, known as merino, has been used from an early period. In the
time of the Stuarts, an attempt was made to monopolize all the Spanish wool
exported.

Wars and bad government in Spain have destroyed the export trade in merino
wool, but the breed, transplanted into Germany