cultivated. We abstain from giving the figures in this as in several other
instances, because the census, which will shortly be published, will afford
exact information on all these points.

The establishment of silk factories on the river Bollen brought Macclesfield
into notice in the beginning of this century. Unhampered by the restrictions
which weighed upon the Spitalfields manufacturers, and nurtured by the
monopoly accorded to English silks, the silk weaving trade gradually attained
great prosperity between 1808 and 1825. At that period the commencement of
the fiscal changes, which have rendered the silk trade quite open to foreign
competition, produced a serious effect on the prosperity of Macclesfield.

In 1832 the number of mills at work had diminished nearly one-half, and the
number of hands by two-thirds. Since that period, after various
vicissitudes, the silk trade has acquired a more healthy tone, and we presume
that the inhabitants do not now consider the alterations commenced by
Huskisson, and completed by Peel, injurious to their interests; since, at the
last election, they returned one free-trader, a London shopkeeper, in
conjunction with a local banker and manufacturer.

Macclesfield has now to contend with home as well as foreign competition, for
silk manufactories have been spread over the kingdom in many directions.

We may expect to see in a few years, as the result of the universal extension
of railway communication, a great distribution and transplantation of
manufacturing establishments to towns where cheap labour and provisions, or
good water or water-power, or cheap fuel, offer any advantages, There is
something very curious to be noted in the manner in which certain of our
principal manufactures have remained constant, while others have been
transplanted from place to place, and in which ports have risen and fallen.

The glory of the Cinque Ports seems departed for ever, unless as harbours of
refuge, while Folkestone, by the help of a railway, has acquired a
considerable trade at the expense of Dover. The same power which has
rendered Southampton great has reduced Falmouth and Harwich to a miserably
low ebb. The sea-borne trade of Chester is gone for ever, but Birkenhead
hopes to rise by the power of steam.

No changes can seriously injure Hull, although railways will give Great
Grimsby a large share of the overflowings of the new kind of trade created by
large steam boats and the