large portion of the interior of Britain, including the whole of Yorkshire. There were Brigantes also in Ireland, and Mr. Wright adduced arguments to show that the British population of Yorkshire belonged probably to the Gaelic branch of the Celtic race, and not to the Cymric. He described what were known of the peculiar characteristics of this British population of the Roman occupation of Britain, and of the establishment of the Anglo-Saxons, and he pointed out the interesting characteristics of many of the supposed British interments in East Yorkshire, as belonging, he suspected, to the period of the independence of the British towns preceding the Saxon invasion. He then read an account of the opening of an ancient sepulchral tumulus in the township of Bridlington, by Mr. Edward Tindall of that place. A skeleton was found, laid on its back, in a trench or grave cut in the chalk, with a rude urn which had been turned on the lathe. A flint spear-head was found, according to the description, in the skull, as though it had penetrated from the back of the neck to the jaw. Mr. Wright concluded by pointing out circumstances in this interment which were rather of a Teutonic character, than Celtic or Roman. M STATISTICAL SCIENCE. Address by the President, EDWARD BAINES, Esq., on opening the Section. If the British Association were a theatre for intellectual display, I should shrink from occupying a chair in which I have had such distinguished predecessors. But if I understand the spirit of this Association, it is the simple, honest, earnest pursuit of truth; first, of truth in facts, and secondly, of truth in principles; and it would be quite foreign to that spirit either to attempt anything of display or to apologize for its absence. I shall be per permitted, however, to welcome the disciples of economical and statistical science on their visit to this important centre of industry, where practical illustrations may be found of many branches of their subject, and where, I hope, there are many who can value their inquiries. After the remarks made last night by the President of the Association, it may seem superfluous to say anything further on the claims of that science which he pronounced to "bear more immediately than any others on the prosperity of nations and the well-being of mankind." We must all have felt how unanswerably the President proved the value of economical and statistical science, when he referred to the department of vital statistics, and showed what terrific losses had been sustained by our army and navy and the army of France, from the neglect of sanitary rules. But I may just remark that what gave to the recent report of Mr. Sidney idney Herbert's commission on the health of our troops in barracks its resistless force, was the certainty and precision with which statistical researches enabled it to measure the amount of loss sustained, by comparison with the mortality in other classes of the population at the same ages. The report might have dwelt on sickness, on injudicious diet, on defective ventilation, on want of drainage, and so forth, and all such statements would have been pronounced to be exaggerations or errors; but when it applied the ascertained scale of mortality so as to prove that there were so many deaths in the thousand when there ought only to have been half that number, the definiteness of the figures and facts defied evasion, fastened on the public mind and conscience, and compelled immediate measures of reform. Those persons who have ignorantly charged upon political economy and statistics a disregard of moral considerations and of humanity, may now see how egregiously they were mistaken, and how the arithmetic which they thought so heartless is rising up as the most powerful advocate of the value of human life, of health, of domestic comfort, of temperance, of virtue, of proper leisure, of education, and of all that can purify and elevate society. I am glad to know that we shall have one or more papers on important points of vital statistics laid before this meeting. May I for a moment refer to another reproach thrown upon statistics, namely, that they may be so used as to prove anything? I hardly need say that it is unfair to argue from the abuse of a thing against its proper use. But it may be admitted, that there is sufficient ground for this reproach, in the negligent or dishonest use sometimes made of statistics, to call upon us for the exercise of great caution, so that in the first place we may be sure we have got all the facts that are essential, and in the next place that we draw from them sound and accurate conclusions. The statist ought to remember how liable are loose and defective masses of figures to be used by both sides in controversy, each picking up such as suit him wherewith to pelt his antagonist. It is valuable to collect facts, but it is still more useful to ascertain that they are exact and complete, and then so to arrange them that they may serve to build up some useful structure. A statist ought to lay a charge upon his conscience, as though he were sworn in the form of our old oath to speak "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Nor can we be too careful to reason fairly and soundly from the facts we may amass; for it is the facts of the statist and the doctrines founded upon them by the economist, which, to a great extent, guide our practical legislation, and thus affect the great interests of society. I cannot refrain from expressing my conviction, that as the science we cultivate has been shown to be favourable to humanity, so it is no less favourable to freedom. Within the last quarter of a century how busy has it been in knocking off all sorts of fetters from human energies! It is, indeed, opposed by the interests which restrictions have created, sometimes manufacturing, sometimes agricultural; but in England at least its march in the path of freedom has been rapid and steady; and we may say of it, vestigia nulla retror sum. On the Woollen Manufacture of England, with special reference to the Leeds Clothing District. By EDWARD BAINES. The author commenced his paper by observing that it was suitable, when the British Association honoured Leeds with a visit, that its members should receive some account of the great branch of manufacturing industry of which Leeds was the ancient seat, and which prevailed here on a larger scale than in any other part of England or of the world. It was peculiarly desirable that such an account should be rendered to this Section, because, notwithstanding the antiquity of the manufacture, its economy and statistics were by no means well ascertained. Though a large part of the raw material was grown at home, we had absolutely no reliable statistics of the amount of this famous product of the British Isles. It was hoped, therefore, that the present attempt to ascertain the facts connected with the woollen manufacture might not bewithout its use; and also that it might derive some additional interest from indicating remarkable modern changes in this department of industry, and explaining some peculiarities which at first sight perplexed the political economist. The woollen manufacture of Yorkshire was prosperous and advancing; but it could not fail to have been noticed that its progress was less rapid and extraordinary than that of other textile manufactures; and it might be well to show that this was to be ascribed to circumstances inherent in the nature of the fabric, and not to indifference and apathy on the part of those engaged in this branch of industry. The difference between the woollen and the worsted fabrics consisted chiefly in the woollen yarn being very slightly twisted, so as to leave the fibres at liberty for the process of felting, whilst the worsted yarn was hard spun and made into a much stronger thread. The feebleness of the woollen yarn made it more difficult to be woven by the power-loom than either worsted, cotton, linen, or silk, none of which was susceptible of being felted. The processes of the woollen manufacture are more numerous and complex than those of any other of our textile manufactures, and are performed by a much greater variety of machines and of workpeople. It was pretty obvious, the author remarked, that there must be proportionate difficulty in effecting improvements which would tell materially on the quantity or the price of the goods produced. There was still another fact which retarded the advance of the woollen as compared with other manufactures, namely, the higher price of the raw material, wool being about three times the market price of cotton and flax. Nor could sheep's wool be augmented in quantity so rapidly as raw materials which merely required the cultivation of the soil. But the economist might inquire how is it that the worsted manufacture has of late years increased so much more rapidly than the woollen, seeing that it uses the same raw material, sheep's wool? It was to be ascribed in part to very remarkable improvements made within these few years in the process of combing, which was now performed by machinery instead of by hand, and the cost of the process reduced almost to nothing,-in part to the greater simplicity of the other processes, admitting of their being carried on almost entirely in large factories, but more than all to the introduction of cotton warps into the manufacture, which had not only cheapened the raw material, but had introduced a vast variety new descriptions of goods, light, beautiful, cheap, and adapted both for dress and furniture. According to the last Factory Return made by the Factory Inspectors in 1856, and printed by the House of Commons in 1857, there were in Yorkshire 445 worsted factories and 806 woollen factories; but the number of opera tives was 78,994 in the former, and only 42,982 in the latter. The average number of operatives in the worsted factories, therefore, was 177, whilst in the woollen factories it was only 53. The whole number of operatives returned in the census of 1851, as employed in these two manufactures in the county of York, was 97,147 in the worsted manufacture, and 81,128 in the woollen. Four-fifths of all the hands employed in the worsted trade were in factories, whilst only about half of those in the woollen trade were in factories. Everything tended to show that the worsted manufacture, like those of cotton and linen, had become an employment carried on by the machinery of large factories; and as mechanical improvements were con stantly speeding the power-loom and the spindle, so that in worsted factories the power-loom had increased 67 per cent. in speed within the last ten years, and the spindle 114 per cent., manufactures thus situated must advance more rapidly than those which, like the woollen, were more dependent on manual labour. The woollen manufacture was surpassed in extent by the cotton manufacture at the beginning of the present century. It still held the second place in regard to the number of operatives employed, though not to the number employed in factories, in which it was surpassed both by the worsted and the flax or linen trades. In the woollen mills, between 1838 and 1856, the number of operatives increased 44 per cent., the horse-power employed increased 25 per cent., and the number of power-looms increased 572 per cent.; but still the other manufactures advanced with greater strides in almost all these respects. The author next referred to the sources from which the raw material, sheep's wool, is drawn, and to the remarkable changes which the present century has witnessed with regard to it. The wool was English, foreign, and colonial, and came from all quarters of the globe. Our largest supply was from the United Kingdom, but nearly half of the domestic wools was consumed in the worsted manufacture, and the other half was used for the lower kinds of woollen goods. Within living memory Yorkshire cloth was made exclusively of English wool, though Spanish wool had long been used for the finer cloths of the West of England. Now, however, English wool, from its comparative coarseness, was entirely disused in the making of broad-cloth. In the last half of the 18th century the import of foreign wool fluctuated from a little under to a little over two million pounds weight a year. In 1799 it was 2,263,666 lbs. But in the year 1857 the quantity of foreign and colonial wool imported was 127,390,885 lbs., of which 90,903,666 lbs. was retained for home consumption. As the exports of woollen goods did not increase in any proportion whatever to these figures, it was evident that the character of the cloth, both that worn at home and that exported, must have changed by the substitution of foreign and colonial for English wool. The foreign wool first used when this improvement in the quality of the cloth began, was that of Spain, the native country of the merino sheep. The total import of wool sprang up suddenly from 2,263,666 lbs. in the year 1799, to 8,609,368 lbs. in 1800; and of the latter quantity, 6,062,824 lbs., or more than two-thirds, was Spanish. After the French invasion of Spain and the long Peninsular wars, the quality of Spanish wool degenerated, and the quantity fell off; and its place in our manufacture was gradually filled by the wool of Saxony and Silesia, into which country the merino breed of sheep had been introduced in 1765. The German wool was still by much the finest used in any country; but as the merino flocks were introduced by Mr. Macarthur into our great Australian colonies, and were found to increase there immensely without any very great degeneracy in the quality of the fleece, German wool had in its turn to a very considerable extent been superseded by Australian. The following Table showed the imports and exports of foreign and colonial wool, at intervals of about ten years, for the last century : following Table : The changes which had taken place in the sources of supply were shown in the Here we see the decline in the quantity of Spanish wool imported from 6,062,824 lbs. in 1800, to 383,129 lbs, in 1857; the increase of German wool from 412,394 lbs. in 1800, to 26,073,882 lbs. in 1830; and its subsequent decline to 5,993,380 lbs, in 1857; the increase of Australian wool from 167 lbs. in 1810, to 49,209,655 lbs. in 1857; the increase in South African or Cape wool from 9623 lbs. in 1816, to 14,287,828 lbs. in 1857; and the increase in East India wool from 67,763 lbs. in 1834, to 19,370,741 lbs. in 1857. These were remarkable commercial changes, and they warranted the hope that we might ere long find in the East Indies, Australia, and Africa, sources of supply for the still more important raw material of cotton, produced by the labour of freemen, instead of being so dangerously and perniciously dependent on the slaveraised cotton of the United States. The imports of Gerinan wool had fallen off even to a greater extent than appeared from the above Table, inasmuch as there was now a large quantity of rag-wool, called shoddy and mungo, imported from Germany; and he was assured by Mr. Fonblanque, of the Statistical department of the Board of Trade, that no distinction was made at the Custom-house between the entries of the finest Saxon wool, which was of the value of 3s. per lb., and those of shoddy, which was only worth a few pence per lb. Since this paper was written, the Hon. Stephen Rice, Deputy-chairman of the Board of Customs, had assured him that shoddy should in future be entered separately from wool. Of the annual production of wool in the United Kingdom, there were, as had been said, no reliable statistics whatever, and the judgment of those engaged in the trade varied very widely. The balance of authority would dispose us to conclude that the annual produce of domestic wool must be between 150,000,000 lbs. and 200,000,000 lbs. If we took the medium, namely, 175,000,000 lbs. at 1s. 3d. per lb., which was about the average price of the last thirty years, the value of this great raw material produced at home would be £10,937,500. The judgment thus formed from a comparison of authorities had been exactly and unexpectedly confirmed by the result of careful inquiries and calculations, founded on the number of hands employed, the power of the machinery, and the estimated value of the goods manufactured. That result was that 160,000,000 lbs. is used by the woollen and worsted manufacturers, whilst the quantity exported in 1857 was 15,142,881 lbs., making an aggregate of 175,142,881 lbs. of English wool. The exports of English wool, both in the raw state and in the first stage of manufacture, namely, yarn, were great and rapidly increasing. Thus the farmer was deriving benefit from the freedom of trade, and English wool was resuming its flow through channels which legislation had closed for five centuries. It was for our manufacturers to take care that no other country made a better use of their native raw material than themselves. The author then glanced at the history of this ancient manufacture up to our own times, and observed that they ought not in that Association and in that Section to withhold the honour due to the high intelligence, manly spirit, and wonderful disinterestedness of Lord Milton, afterwards Earl Fitzwilliam, who, whilst representing the great seat of the woollen manufacture, Yorkshire, advocated the removal of protection from the manufacturers, and, although one of the largest landowners, contended for the removal of protection from agriculture. It was a matter of just pride for this Association and for Yorkshire to remember that that enlightened and high-minded nobleman was the first president of the British Association. The woollen manufacture, in its various branches, was very extensively diffused. According to the last Factory Return, it prevailed in twenty-two counties of England, ten of Wales, twentyfour of Scotland, and six of Ireland. More than one-half of the operatives employed in the woollen factories were in the county of York, namely, 42,992 out of 79,081. The worsted manufacture, on the other hand, though for some centuries it had its chief seat in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, had now obtained a remarkable concentration in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Out of 87,994 factory operatives in the worsted trade of the United Kingdom, 78,994 were in Yorkshire. The chief seat of the manufacture of superfine broad-cloth had for centuries been, and still was, the West of England, and especially the counties of Gloucester and Wilts. The population, and doubtless also the trade of the West Riding of Yorkshire, had increased much more rapidly both in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than those of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Norfolk. Between the years 1801 and 1851 the population of Leeds increased 224 per cent.; Bradford 682 per cent.; Huddersfield 325 per cent.; Halifax 179 per cent.; and Norwich 88 per cent. The author apprehended that the principal advantages of the West Riding over Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Norfolk consisted, first, in the greater cheapness of coal and iron; secondly, in the larger body of men skilled in the making and working of machinery; and thirdly, in the facility of access to the great ports of Liverpool and Hull. But he inclined to think that the mere fact of Yorkshire having devoted itself to the manufacture of cheap goods had been as influential as any other cause. |