quest of nearly all the unprotected foreign markets,
the sudden multiplication of capital and national wealth; on the other
hand, a still more rapid multiplication of the proletariat, the
destruction of all property-holding and of all security of employment for
the working-class, demoralisation, political excitement, and all those
facts so highly repugnant to Englishmen in comfortable circumstances,
which we shall have to consider in the following pages. Having already
seen what a transformation in the social condition of the lower classes a
single such clumsy machine as the jenny had wrought, there is no cause
for surprise as to that which a complete and interdependent system of
finely adjusted machinery has brought about, machinery which receives raw
material and turns out woven goods.

Meanwhile, let us trace the development of English manufacture {7}
somewhat more minutely, beginning with the cotton industry. In the years
1771-1775, there were annually imported into England rather less than
5,000,000 pounds of raw cotton; in the year 1841 there were imported
528,000,000 pounds, and the import for 1844 will reach at least
600,000,000 pounds. In 1834 England exported 556,000,000 yards of woven
cotton goods, 76,500,000 pounds of cotton yarn, and cotton hosiery of the
value of 1,200,000 pounds. In the same year over 8,000,000 mule spindles
were at work, 110,000 power and 250,000 hand-looms, throstle spindles not
included, in the service of the cotton industry; and, according to
MacCulloch's reckoning, nearly a million and a half human beings were
supported by this branch, of whom but 220,000 worked in the mills; the
power used in these mills was steam, equivalent to 33,000 horse-power,
and water, equivalent to 11,000 horse-power. At present these figures
are far from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in the year
1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers
is greater by one-half than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this
industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly
revolutionised this county, converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated
swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in
eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and Manchester,
containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighbouring towns,
Bolton with 60,000, Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with 50,000, Preston
with 60,000, Ashton and Stalybridge wi