, pronounced
that the meanest hack ever imported from Tangier would produce a diner
progeny than could be expected from the best sire of our native breed.
They would not readily have believed that a time would come when the
princes and nobles of neighbouring lands would be as eager to obtain
horses from England as ever the English had been to obtain horses from
Barbary. [70]

The increase of vegetable and animal produce, though great, seems small
when compared with the increase of our mineral wealth. In 1685 the tin
of Cornwall, which had, more than two thousand years before, attracted
the Tyrian sails beyond the pillars of Hercules, was still one of the
most valuable subterranean productions of the island. The quantity
annually extracted from the earth was found to be, some years later,
sixteen hundred tons, probably about a third of what it now is. [71] But
the veins of copper which lie in the same region were, in the time of
Charles the Second, altogether neglected, nor did any landowner take
them into the account in estimating the value of his property. Cornwall
and Wales at present yield annually near fifteen thousand tons of
copper, worth near a million and a half sterling; that is to say, worth
about twice as much as the annual produce of all English mines of all
descriptions in the seventeenth century. [72] The first bed of rock salt
had been discovered in Cheshire not long after the Restoration, but
does not appear to have been worked till much later. The salt which
was obtained by a rude process from brine pits was held in no high
estimation. The pans in which the manufacture was carried on exhaled a
sulphurous stench; and, when the evaporation was complete, the substance
which was left was scarcely fit to be used with food. Physicians
attributed the scorbutic and pulmonary complaints which were common
among the English to this unwholesome condiment. It was therefore
seldom used by the upper and middle classes; and there was a regular and
considerable importation from France. At present our springs and mines
not only supply our own immense demand, but send annually more than
seven hundred millions of pounds of excellent salt to foreign countries.
[73]

Far more important has been the improvement of our iron works. Such
works had long existed in our island, but had not prospered, and had
been regarded with no favourable eye by the government and by the
public. It was not then the practice to employ coal for s