MANCHESTER, The second town of the empire in point of population, and the most important on account of its manufactures, is situated almost at the south-eastern extremity of the county of Lancaster, and is distant 186 miles north-west by north from London. The site of the original town was early occupied by a fort, which the Celts, migrating from the continent, and gradually spreading from the north, planted at Castle Field, upon the bank of the river Irwell. Whitaker, the learned historian of the ancient town, gives this station the name of “Mancenion, or the Place of Tents.” Possession was taken of it by the Romans about a century after its formation (a. d. 72), and they continued masters of it during three centuries, until their final departure from the island. Several of the great Roman roads, traces of which still remain, centred at this point. The fort subsequently fell into the hands of the Pictish invaders, but, after a lengthened struggle, was wrested from them by the Saxons, who repaired the damage to the “Aldport Town,” brought the people into due subjection to the lord or thegn, whose baronial hall covered the space of the existing Chetham’s College, and built the churches of St Mary and St Michael. “Ma-nigeeastre,” as Hollingworth styles the town, was occupied by the Danes about the year 870; and little is known of its succeeding history until, in the apportionment of territory made by the Norman conqueror, Manchester was assigned to William ofPoictou, from whom the lordship of the manor has descended by marriage, hereditary succession, or purchase, through the families of Grelley, De la Warre, West, and De Lacye, to “Mossley of the Hough,” whose successor, Sir Oswald Mosley, Bart., and member for North Staffordshire, is the present possessor of the manorial rights and property. The Grelleys, De la Warres, and Wests, sat as barons in parliament; and Thomas de Grelley granted, in 1301, a “great charter of Manchester,” which, however, has no existing validity.

The Reformation was violently opposed in Manchester; Collyer, the warden of the “College of the thessed Virgin,” Bradford, and Pendlebury, were zealots in the religious controversies it excited; and Bradford died a martyr. In Elizabeth’s reign, Persons and Campion, the noted Jesuits, plotted in these districts; and from Ancoat’s Lane, now a densely-peopled quarter of the town, one of the Martin Marprelate presses sent forth its stirring missives. The clergy were said to be so hostile to the progress of the Reformation, that the “college” was dissolved in the reign of Edward the Sixth; in Elizabeth’s reign a Commissioner’s Court to promote the Reformation was established; and the most severe measures were taken against recusants, who swarmed in the dungeons of Manchester. In 1584 some were executed, one at Manchester, and their heads exposed on the “college.” In the “great rebellion,” Manchester took a very prominent part, the anti-monarchical party having the ascendency. A brawl, which arose between the followers of Lord Strange (afterwards the ill-fated Earl of Derby) and the inhabitants, was magnified into a great battle, and proclaimed in the metropolis as “the beginning of civil warres in England, or terrible news from the north Lord Strange being impeached by the lower house for his conduct in the affair. Subsequently the town was formally besieged by his lordship’s forces, but they were driven off, and the troops which had been levied for the defence of the place were engagèd in various expeditions, one of which was the noted attack on Lathom House. When the warfare had ceased in England, sequestrators were sent down, who alienated the revenues of the college; presbyteries were established throughout the whole of Lancashire; Manchester was the central point of one “classical division,” and the provincial synod met there. In these troubled times the warden Heyrick, a man of eminent endowments and thrilling eloquence, acted a distinguished part.

Passing over another long interval, the people of Manchester are found espousing the cause of the Chevalier St George, for their devotion to whom five of the inhabitants were executed in the town. In 1745, they again stood forth in favour of the young Prince Charles; one of the localities in which the plans for his invasion of the monarchy were concocted being in the immediate vicinity, at Jackson’s Ferry, near Didsbury. In the summer previous to his public appearance in Scotland, the prince secretly visited Manchester, and was entertained for a considerable time at Ancoat’s Hall, the seat of Sir Oswald Mosley, the lord of the manor. The Pretender’s forces entered the town on the 28th and 29th of November. They did not receive a very cordial welcome; and when they marched forward by Macclesfield towards Derby, the prince had enlisted from the inhabitants only about three hundred followers, and these chiefly of the lower order. In his subsequent precipitate retreat through Manchester, his reception was even less agreeable than before. The “Manchester regiment” were left to garrison Carlisle, which place speedily surrendered to the Duke of Cumberland, and they were made prisoners. Many were sent abroad; some of the leaders suffered decapitation, and their heads were exhibited on the top of the Manchester Exchange. 4 [7:14:216]The later history of the inhabitants is of a more loyal character. They were very active in the American contest, the war of the French revolution, and the more recent struggle with Napoleon, raising many regiments of volunteers, and otherwise affording their aid very freely. Sir Robert Peel, then residing near Bury, but who was virtually a Manchester merchant, his establishment being in that town, contributed money, and raised a troop of volunteers; and, in the year 1798, Peel and Yates subscribed ten thousand pounds to the “voluntary contribution for the defence of the country.” The distress which the protracted war engendered, and the political ferment of the times, gave rise, in August 1819, to the noted “Peterloo” affair, in which a countless mass of people, having assembled for the alleged object of petitioning the House of Commons, was dispersed by the yeomanry and the troops of the line. The radicalism of these times has’ since cooled down into a more mitigated species of liberalism. In 1830-1831, many very numerous meetings were held in favour of the reform bill; and, when it became a law, the electors returned as their representatives to parliament the Right Honourable C. Poulett Thomson, then vice-president of the Board of Trade, and Mark Philips, Esq. both gentlemen of liberal politics. Manchester had previously sent representatives in early times. In the year 1366, the Sheriff of Lancashire, being required to cause the return of burgesses to parliament from boroughs of sufficient importance to require representation, reported that there was no city or borough in the county willing to accept the burdensome honour, “by reason of their inability, low condition, or poverty.” But in Cromwell’s time, July 1654, Manchester sent Mr Charles Worsley, and, in the next year, Mr R. Ratcliffe, to represent her interests.

Manchester has been a place of trade from a very early period. In the most remote antiquity the people traded with the Greeks of Marseilles, and with other foreigners, through Ribchester, then a considerable port on the Ribble, which river is now no longer navigable so far inland. In the reign of Henry VIII. a law was enacted to remove the right of sanctuary from Manchester to Chester, on the ground that it caused the resort hither of idle and dissolute persons, to the injury of the “trade, both in linens and woollens,” for which the place was “distinguished,” and which gave employment to “many artificers and poor folks,” whose masters, “by their strict and true dealing,” caused “the resort of many strangers from Ireland and elsewhere, with linen, yarn, wool, and other necessary wares for making of cloth, to be sold there.” Camden speaks of the town as “of great account for certain woollen clothes there wrought and in the year 1650 the people are described as “the most industrious in the northern parts of the kingdom.” The disturbances in France and the Netherlands had tended not a little to the growth of manufactures in the town, by causing the settlement of French and Flemish artisans in Lancashire. Early in the last century it was mentioned as a remarkable fact, that in Manchester and Bolton alone goods to the amount of L.600,000 were annually manufactured. The trade appears, in fact, to have attained to as large a growth as was possible in the then confined state of mechanical knowledge. It was not until an impulse was given to invention, and that splendid series of machines was planned, of which the effects have been so amazing, that Manchester became really a place of commercial eminence and great resort.

The first of these inventions, in point of date, was the water-frame, of which Arkwright claimed to be the originator, in 1769. In 1770, the spinning-jenny of James Hargreaves was first heard of. In 1779, Crompton’s mule-jenny was invented. The “throstle’Ms another important discovery. In 1785 Arkwright took out a patent for improved carding, drawing, and roving machines. The steam-engine of Watt dates about the same time, although there were sundry modifications of it both before and afterwards. The power-loom, for which Cartwright took out his last patent in 1787, but which underwent many changes before it could be considered as a practical machine, completes the list of early discoveries. There were, of course, various inventions subordinate to these. In the present century, also, a machine has been constructed which promises almost to cutvie all others in importance; it is the self-acting mule, the invention of Messrs Sharp, Roberts, and Company of Manchester. The last patent was taken out in 1830; and there are now nearly half a million of spindles at work on the principle ofspìnning yarn almost independently of human labour.

The history of this invention is fraught with instruction to the working classes. Attention was first directed to the possibility of contriving a self-acting mule, in consequence of the frequency of “turns-out” amongst the spinners, and the intolerable domination which they were enabled to exercise, from the circumstance of a comparatively small class of workmen having it in their power at any moment to suspend the whole trade of cotton spinning. One “spinner” has three or four young hands immediately dependent upon himself; he has also four or five virtually dependent on him, inasmuch as they being occupied in preparing the raw cotton for him to spin, if he take a fit of idleness or insubordination, the preliminary processes are of course suspended. In the same way, if the spinners, as a body, become idle, the weavers, and eventually the bleachers, spinners, and printers, are brought to a stand; in fact, the whole cotton trade is locked up, and misery and privation are the immediate and wide-spread results. These considerations induced the master spinners, about ten years ago, to call into play the talent of ingenious men, for the purpose of constructing such a machine as would give more stability and regularity to the processes of spinning. This machine has the virtue of being easily grafted on the older-fashioned mules, a fifth of the value of which is sacrificed in making them self-acting.

But the mere discovery of all these machines was of little benefit to the country, as long as they could be restricted in their use at the caprice of the patentee. Accordingly, through the instrumentality of Mr Peel, an association of master manufacturers was formed, and a subscription to take proceedings for setting aside Arkwright’s patents was entered into, upon the principle of each spinner paying a shilling per spindle for as many as he used. The original subscription list is still in existence; the number of spindles subscribed for was about twenty thousand, being not more than a fourth of the number now employed by many large manufacturers. In 1781 and 1785 Arkwright’s patents were annulled, and the cotton trade took a gigantic stride. The exports, which in 1701 were only to the value of L.23,253, and in 1780 only L.355,060, had risen in 1787 to L.1,101,457, and in 1800 to L.5.406,501. The import of raw cotton, which in 1751 was only 2,976,610 pounds weight, was in 1780 upwards of 6,700,000, in 1790 thirty-one millions and a half, and in 1800 fifty-six millions of pounds. In 1787 it was estimated that there were in Lancashire forty-one cotton factories, twenty-two in Derbyshire, and seventeen in Nottinghamshire. In 1790 the estimate had increased; and in 1817 Mr Kennedy of Manchester calculated that there were 110,763 persons employed in cotton-spinning, and 20,768 horses’ power.

In 1832, Messrs Greg of Manchester made a fresh estimate, giving the number of operatives employed in the cotton-spinning and weaving mills only of Great Britain 160,000. In 1833 the import of cotton to England was 303,658,837 lbs. The weekly consumption is now from 18,000 to 19,000 bags; whilst, in the year 1782, a great [7:14:217]panic was excited in Manchester by the announcement that 7012 bags of cotton had been imported between December and April. In 1788, a meeting was held in Manchester to consider the great depression under which the cotton manufacture was labouring from the “immense importation” of Indian goods; and shortly afterwards the cotton manufacturers of Lancashire, in conjunction with those of Scotland, appointed deputies to obtain an interview with the king’s ministers, and solicit permission to erect themselves into a Company of Traders, with privileges similar to those enjoyed by the East India Company. At this time it was estimated that the cotton manufacture employed 159,000 men, 90,000 women, and 101,000 children, an exaggerated number. In truth, until the passing of the factory act, and the appointment of inspectors and superintendents under its authority, there were no means of ascertaining the number of hands employed either in the whole country or in districts. Now, however, this can be done satisfactorily. The most recent return of the hands employed (1836) is, for Manchester, as follows:
[table]

The following is a Return of the Hands not included in the above Townships, which, added to the above, will give the com-plete numbers for the Parish of Manchester :—
[table]

The trade of Manchester, however, is not to be considered as limited to the amounts given in these tables. Numberless manufacturers have works on the borders of Cheshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and Staffordshire, whilst their warehouses are situated, and all their transactions centre, in Manchester. Wherever labour is cheap, thither they resort. Not to travel, however, out of the county, we shall give the following summary of the factory hands in all the other parishes of Lancashire, comprising nearly the whole of Lancashire :—
[7:14:218]
[table]
[table]

Ίο these must be added, in order to afford a complete number of steam-engines and water-wheels with the horseview of the operations m cotton factories, the following power and the number of hands employed in the year summary of mills in the county of Lancaster, and the 1835. r; j
[table]

•mlìn J¶umhľJ 1 i n the ≡ e ι factones A kee P s in motion an bers, recently made to government, comprises the follow-ιmme ber of power-looms. A return of the num-ing summary of parishes.
[7:14:219]

In addition to these, Mr Trimmer and Mr Bates return the following from their respective superintendencies:
[table]

Of which about 485 are in the parish of Manchester.

Handdoom weaving has been almost wholly superseded. It is calculated that there are in the town of Manchester only about 3000 weavers; but the out-townships of Radcliffe, Pilkington, Unsworth, Pilsworth, Prestwich, Great and Little Heaton, Blackley, Newton, Failsworth, Alkrington, and Tonge, also contain a considerable number of hand-looms, in cotton, employed by Manchester houses.

The earnings of weavers vary exceedingly. The weaver of Marseilles toilet-covers, a Manchester manufacture, will earn from 7s. 6d. to 10s. a week nett, and the weavers of fancy waistcoatings, &c. (at Huddersfield) can earn 15s. weekly; whilst the weavers at Bolton (from 7000 to 8000 in number) are said to average only 4s. 1-∣d. weekly for I 60 cambrics, which constitute a staple article in that town. Wages fell there twenty-one and a half per cent, between 1827 and 1834. The general rate was given to a recent parliamentary committee as follows:
[table]

In a recent report made by Dr Kay, one of the assistant poor-law commissioners, formerly a resident of Manchester, it was stated that contracts had been made for the erection, within two years, of mills which would require seven thousand horses’ power to set them in operation. It may be stated that, presuming one half of the power to be employed in producing yarn,^[2. No. 40’s may be taken as a general average for the quality of the yarn spun. ] there would be an addition to the present consumption of raw cotton of about 2800 bags, weighing about 500 lbs. each, per week, or about fifteen per cent, increase on the present sales. In preparing this cotton, and spinning it into yarn, 19,600 hands wopld be required; and, presuming the other moiety of the 7000 horses’ power to be employed in afterwards weaving the yarn into cloth, there would be needed for this process 26,250 weavers, making a total addition to the hands employed in the cotton trade of 45,850 persons, besides mechanics, warehousemen, clerks, &c. For the 3500 horses’ power supposed to be employed in spinning, there will be required 2,800,000 spindles, which alone will be worth about half a million of money. Of the 19,600 persons working this horse-power, probably 8400 will be occupied in the preparatory processes, and will earn, on the average, lθs. per week. Of the remaining 11,200 engaged in the spinning, about one fourth will be men earning from 30s. to 40s. a week; the other three fourths, children, receiving from 4s. to 9s. The 26,250 supposed to be employed in weaving will earn probably, on an average, not less than lθs. a week. Extraordinary and improbable as the extent of this increase may appear, there is reason to believe that the estimate is by no means exaggerated. It is stated, upon good authority, that in Bolton alone one foundery has orders, to be executed within this year, for a thousand horse-power of steam-engines; and, with equal authenticity, it is asserted that, in the district of Ashton-under-Lyne, the increase in factories will cause a demand for at least 7000 new hands. Nor is the calculated increase in the consumption of cotton so unprecedented as at first view it may appear. Last year the weekly consumption was 17,750 bags, whilst in 1812 it was only about 12,000. In one year, namely, in 1834-35, the weekly consumption has increased 366 bags, or about 19,000 bags in the year. Cotton, indeed, has become an article of universal use, and new fabrics, in which it forms the sole or a main ingredient, are daily brought into the market.

The following statement goes far to corroborate the estimate of Dr Kay.

Number of Mills newly built or enlarged during the Year 1835-36, in Manchester and the County of Lancaster.
[table]

The power here stated is incomplete, several factories being yet unfinished. Of the total number of mills given above, five of the cotton and one of the woollen have merely been enlarged; and all the rest are new. The actual power of the cotton-mills varies slightly from the available amount, which is 2007.

It is a notorious fact, that the cotton manufacture has already attained to such a height in Manchester, that extreme difficulty is experienced in obtaining hands, both young and adult, for the mills; it is, then, a question for serious consideration, how the dearth to be created by the “new mills” shall be supplied. Some time ago an agent of the poor-law commissioners was stationed in the town, where he still remains, for the purpose of locating the surplus labourers of the agŋcultural counties in the south and west amongst the manufactures of the cotton districts. From one to two thousand persons have already migrated under his direction; and they express, [7:14:220]generally, the liveliest satisfaction at their change of occupation.

The wages of all classes of factory operatives, though they have undergone reductions as the price of manufactures has sunk, and the price of food been reduced, are still exceedingly good. Mr Rickards, the late inspector of factories for the district, says, « It may be stated of operative families, that a husband gets 26s. to 30s. per week; with perhaps three children as piecers at 10s., 7s. 6d., and 5s. 6d. per week. These are common rates of earnings by mill-operatives.” As to children, he observes, “If there are any children now in cotton mills, receiving less than 3s. per week, they must be the youngest scavengers, and few in number; 3s. 8d. to 4s. 2d. being commonly paid to scavengers since the passing of the present (factory) act, whilst the younger piecers are sometimes paid extra to do scavengers’ work.” The following tables give the wages of the various classes of operatives more in detail.

Average Nett Weckly Earnings of the different Classes of Operatives in the Cotton Factories of Manchester, Stockport, Duckinfield, Stayley Eridge, Hyde, Tintwistle, Oldham, Eolton, &c. &c., drawn from the returns of a Hundred and Fifty-one Mills, employing 48,645 Persons, in May 1833.
[table]
[table]

Average Wages of Young Women employed in Cotton Mills at Manchester.

Wages in cotton factories are not precisely of the same amount in the whole country, but are increased or lowered according to various local circumstances, such as the supply of hands or of water, the rental and local taxes, the facilities of communication by land and water, or the abundance of coal. These considerations have had the effect in recent years, combined with the pernicious working of Trades’ Unions, to scatter the cotton trade over the surface of Lancashire, of Cheshire, and Derbyshire, occasioning frequently the location of mills in spots the most remote. Thus, for example, Preston is becoming’a large depot of the cotton manufacture, the price of labour and local considerations uniting in its favour; another ancient borough, Lancaster, is rising into manufacturing importance, labour being there 25 or 30 per cent, cheaper than in Manchester. Nearer home, in towns whose natural advantages have tended to foster the trade, but in which there is no redundant supply of labour, it appears from the following tables that wages are higher. “I cannot avoid concluding (says the factory commissioners’ First Report), that the rate of wages is higher out of Manchester than it is in it. The earnings of a fine spinner are nearly fifty per cent, higher than those of a coarse spinner, and fine spinning is almost entirely confined to Manchester; consequently, the average earnings of a Manchester spinner should be considerably above those of a spinner of the surrounding district. But if the earnings of coarse spinners in Manchester are compared with those of coarse spinners in the country, no such superiority appears to exist.” [7:14:221]Average Weckly Nett Earnings of Spinners, from tlw Returns of their respective Masters.
[table]

Adults.Children under Eighteen.Total Number employed.Total Wages for the Month ending 4th May Average Weckl; Nett Earnings of one Individual Manchester Stockport Duckinfield and Stayley Bridge Hyde, Brinnington, Disley, &c.Male. 5,361 2,601 2,551 3,202Female. 7,035 2,525 2,421 4,064Male. 4,286 1,715 1,332 2,310Female. 3,903 1,555 1,242 2,45420,585 8,396 8,54212,030 L. s. d. 40,333 2 418,405 5 9419,409 7 5⅛26,537 14 11Pence.117∙56131∙52136∙33132∙3513,71516,0459,6439,15449,553104,685 10 5f126∙75Table showing the Total Number of the Cotton-Workers (comprehending Power-Loom Weavers) in Manchester, Stockport, Hyde, Ducliinfield, Stayley Bridge, Disley, and neighbourhoods, comprised in the Returns made to the Tabular Forms issued on Mth and 20th May 1833; with the Aggregate Amount of their Wages far the Months ending Ath May 1833.And 996 whose age and sex are not given in the returns. (Factory Commissioners Report, D. 1, p. 125.) By total number is meant the total number of which the commission at Manchester obtained returns, and not the total number of cotton-workers at the places indicated.N. B.—The above are all spinners of the same quality of yarn, and consequently there can be no objection to the return on the score that the work is different. The first two manufacturers are both in Manchester, within a few yards of each other, and one master pays double the rate of wages that the other does. The variance is owing to sundry minute circumstances, the difference in machinery being probably one.

At Manchester and Glasgow, the great centres of the cotton trade in England and Scotland, there is a material difference in the price of labour, as the subjoined analysis from the Reports of the factory commissioners shows.
[table]

Amongst other subjects to which the same commissioners directed their attention, the health of factory operatives occupied of course much of their time, and various modes of test and comparison were adopted. Dr Mitchell, one of the medical witnesses examined, made the subjoined estimate of the amount of sickness yearly amongst various classes of operatives :—

Days of Sickness. In the Staffordshire potteries, to the age of 61, 9∙3 per man.
[table]
[7:14:222]

Boys in factories measured.....Inches. 55∙28Ditto not in factories ditto Girls in factories measured...,... 54∙951Ditto not in factories ditto.. .... 54∙976A number of children were also measured, and the result was as under :—Lancashire Proportion in the Hundred.Read. . 83Cannot Read.17Write.38Cannot Write.62Cheshire . 901047• 53Yorkshire . 85154852Derbyshire. . 88124357Staffordshire . 83176139Leicestershire , 80204060Notts , 88124257Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex.,. 81192674Wiltshire , 85153862Somersetshire 89112674Devon . 9645149Gloucestershire , 9284060Worcestershire 1007723Warwickshire . 88123832—— Average...861443571he commissioners also inquired into the state of education amongst manufacturing operatives, and gave the result of an examination of 50,000 work-people as follows :—Proportion in the Hundred.Read, ⅞ n " 0t Keaa Write Cannot ' vnte ∙ Write Average in Scotland.......96 453 47Ireland ....90 1044 56Upon this subject a more elaborate and careful investigation yas made in 1834 and 1835, by the Manchester Statistical Society, from which it appeared that there were in the borough of Manchester 43,304 children receiving education, or 21∙65 per cent, of the population; and in the borough of Salford 12,885 children, or 23∙4 per cent. Of these there are in Manchester 10,108 and in Salford 3131 who attend only day or evening schools; 10,011 in Manchester and 3410 in Salford who attend both day and Sunday schools; and 23,185 in Manchester and 6344 in Salford who attend only Sunday schools. It further appears, that in Manchester two thirds, and in Salford twenty-two and a half per cent, of the children between five and fifteen years of age are receiving instruction.The total quantity of yarn spun in England in 1835 was 248,814,531 pounds, being an increase of nearly seven millions, of pounds over the preceding year. Mr Burn estimates the number of spindles employed in producing it at 11,152,990; and, calculating the capital in the usual way, namely, at 17s. 6d. per spindle, it would appear that L.9,758,864 is the amount embarked in the cotton spinning. From the same excellent source is derived an estimate of the value of the goods manufactured, and the yarn and thread spun in 1835.
[table]

Liverpool and Hull are the principal ports through which the goods and yarn of Manchester are sent abroad; and the amount of customs duties received there (at the former port especially) tends to show the state of the manufactures in Manchester and the county of Lancaster generally. It was, for the year ending April 1834, L.3,733,166.8s. 10d. (gross); for the year ending April 1835, L.3,846,306.9s. lid. (gross); and for the year ending April 1836, L.4,273,000 (gross).

In addition to the cotton manufacture, Manchester has likewise a considerable and rapidly-increasing trade in silk [7:14:223]throwing and weaving. The mill of Mr Vernon Royle, celebrated throughout England for the thrown silk it sends out, was established in 1819-20, and was the first erected in the district. Directly and indirectly, it affords employment to about five thousand persons. In 1819 there were in Manchester about a thousand weavers of mixed silk and cotton goods, and fifty of pure silk. In 1823 the number of the former had increased to 3000 and of the latter to 2500∙ In 1828 there were 4000 of the former class and 8000 of the latter; and in 1832 from 12,000 to 14,000 looms were employed by Manchester houses; and the throwing mills, twelve in number, but of which two were not then in operation, gave occupation to about 3600 hands. The present state of the silk throwing trade is as follows :—

Summary of Silk Mills in Manchester and the County of Lancaster, 1836.
[table]

It is calculated that the Manchester throwsters produce about 8000 pounds of thrown silk weekly, but that the silk looms consume not less than 24,000 pounds, 8000 pounds of which are derived from the Macclesfield throwsters, and the remainder from Congleton, Sandbach, Newcastle, &c. very little foreign thrown being used in Manchester. According to the closest estimate which can be formed, the silk manufacturers having their principal establishments in Manchester employ now not less than 18,500 looms in the weaving of pure or mixed silk goods; and, taking the usual trade average of four persons to a loom, the silk trade of the district, in all its branches, keeps in employment not less than seventy thousand persons. Few of the weavers live in Manchester; they are scattered over the more or less remote rural districts of the county, viz. at Gorton, Newton Heath, Harpurhey, Middleton, Stand, Radcliffe, Pendle-bury, Worsley, Eccles, West Leigh, and Ormskirk. The silk trade is, in fact, changing its centre, which used to be in Macclesfield; Manchester is now the mart; and though in Macclesfield the number of hands employed in the throwing mills is considerably larger than in Manchester, the latter town has very greatly the superiority of numbers in all the other processes. Wages in the silk mills are good; and the hand-loom silk-weavers earn considerably more than the mass of those engaged in cotton. Many females and children are employed in the silk mills. The powerloom has been partially introduced into the manufacture, but hitherto with no decided success. By the returns already quoted it will be seen, that throughout Lancashire only 366 power-looms are employed in silk, of which number 306 are in Manchester, and sixty in the adjoining parish of Eccles.

The population of Manchester has had a most amazing growth. The town comprehends several townships, viz. Manchester, Chorlton-upon-Medlock, Cheetham, Ardwick, Hulme, Newton, Harpurhey, Bradford, and Beswick, form the borough of Manchester; Salford, Pendleton, and Broughton, that of Salford; but they are physically, as well as politically and commercially, one town, though having separate local government. Of the townships of Manchester and Salford, the population was as follows at the decennial periods:
[table]

The township of Chorlton-upon-Medlock, which is filled with factories, was a desert but yesterday, and the population has sprung up in a way wholly unprecedented. It was, in 1801, 675 persons; in 1811, 2581; in 1821, 8209; and in 1831, 20,569.

Property has increased in the same rapid ratio. In 1815 the annual value was L. 19,830, in 1835 it was L.58,844. A similar augmentation has taken place in other townships. In Manchester in 1815 the annual value of property was only L.308,634, in 1835 it was L∙573,085; in Salford it was in 1815 L.49,048, it is now L.l 14,769; in Broughton (a township without manufactures) the annual value of lands and buildings was in 1815 only L.5082, in 1835, L.21,303; in Cheetham (also a township containing only private residences) the value was, in 1815, L.8524; and it is now L.28,541.

It has recently been ascertained, that within a period of four years 700 new streets have been added to the town. Calculating ten houses to a street, and six occupants to each house (a fair estimate), we have an increase of 42,000 souls since the census of 1831; and, making some allowance for the additions to and improvements in [7:14:224]existing streets, it will be found that the population of Manchester, Salford, and their districts, which in 1831 was 232,758, is now not less than 300,000.

Manchester ranks as the first manufacturing town in the empire, and in population it is second only to London.^[6. [table] ] The county is divided into several hundreds, Manchester being situated in the centre of that of Salford, in which there has been an immense increase of population within the present century, the numbers being, in 1801, 177,682, and in 1831, 429,602. The next most important hundreds of the county are those of Amounderness (168,057), and West Derby (170,062). The total annual value of property in Salford hundred was, in 1815, L.918,397,and in 1829, L.l,554,314. Of these amounts, L.488,053 at the former period, and L.751,200 at the latter, were comprised in the parish of Manchester, which is divided into thirty-two parishes.

Manchester, as an old parish, has a parish church, said to have been constructed by a Lord Delaware in 1422, out of two old churches built in 1300. It is a fine Gothic structure, 216 feet in length from east to west, and 120 feet in breadth, with a handsome tower. It is richly ornamented in the cathedral style, having on the exterior numerous grotesque figures projecting from the roof, in the taste of the age in which it was built. It has of late years been extensively repaired and beautified in conformity with the original design, and affords accommodation, by its great proportion of free seats, to a numerous congregation. It was made collegiate by the founder, who amply endowed it; and, by the increased value of the property, has become a rich ecclesiastical establishment, with a warden, four fellows, and two chaplains. But as arrangements are in progress for erecting Manchester and the county in which it is situated into a bishopric, this will occasion considerable changes. The only churches more than fifty years old are, St Ann’s, in the square of that name, consecrated in 1765; and St John’s, in Byrom Street, opened in 1769. As the town has grown, more churches have been built, and others are now being built. The whole number of those edifices in which the established forms of worship are observed is now twenty-four. They are all handsome, some of them elegant structures, and all in the interior are neatly and appropriately finished. As in other manufacturing towns, the number of those who dissent from the Established Church is very considerable. There is one congregation belonging to the Scotch Kirk, and one of the Secession; but the largest division is the adherents to the Roman Catholic Church, consisting for the most part of Irish emigrants employed in the lowest kinds of labour. They have four places of worship, one of them, in Granby Row, opened in 1820, very handsome and costly, in the Gothic style. There are twenty-seven chapels belonging to Wesleyan Methodists of different shades of opinion, the Independents have nine chapels, the Baptists six, the Unitarians three; and there are seven belonging to other smaller sects.

A recent investigation of the circumstances of 4102 families, consisting of 21,034 persons, gave the following important results :—
[table]

As to the religion of the inhabitants, there are other ascertained facts of a more general nature. The church accommodation in Manchester and Salford consists of about 30,000 sittings, exclusively of the Scotch Kirk; that in the Wesleyan Methodist chapels, of about 9000; Roman Catholic and all other dissenting chapels, of about 21,000 sittings. The Sunday schools in Manchester and Salford attached to the various religious communities, and the total numbers instructed by each, are—
[table]
[7:14:225]

s affording t s authentic evidence of the state of the population in Manchester, and the growth of the town, the following returns, obtained from the Excise Office for the district, are of great interest :—

An Account of the dumber of Beer and Spirit Licenses issued in the Town of Μ ιnehesler, and also the Amount of Duty paid on the undermentioned articles in Manchester Collection, in each of the last Ten Years.
[table]

Note. The duty on soap was reduced to one half the former rates from the 31st of May 1833. In 1833, the only manufacturer who carried on business in Manchester Collection ceased work ing, and the whole of the soap which is consumed in the town must consequently be supplied from other parts of the country. With respect to the duties on spirits for consumption in , Manchester, it is necessary to observe that the supply is derived from other places, chiefly, it is presumed, from the metropolis; and the duties are paid thereon at the place where the same is distilled or imported, as the case may be. The decrease or total cessation of payments under some heads is of course accounted for by the reduction or abolition of the respective duties.

Excise Office, 13th January 1836.
[7:14:226]

After London, Liverpool, and Dublin, the payments to the post-office in Manchester exceed those of any town In the kingdom. They have been for three years as follows, viz. in 1832, L.53,5l0. 8s. 4d.; in 1833, L.56,287. 16s. lid.; and in 1834, L.60,621. 12s. 6d.The state of the poor in Manchester, and throughout Lancashire generally, is remarkably comfortable and prosperous. A reference to the returns of the expenditure of poor’s rate in Lancashire, and other counties, places this fact quite beyond dispute.

The wealth of the town, and its gradual increase, are shown from the subjoined return, in a way the most authentic and complete.

Return of the Amount of Duties paid in Manchester and Forty four adjoining Townships, constituting the whole Pa-rishes of Manchester and Eccles, and a part of the Parish of Middleton, in each successive Year since 1820.
[table]
[table]
[table]

In the township of Manchester, the expenditure exclusively for the poor (deducting the heavy payments to hundred and county rates, and for constables’ accounts), was,

The population is taken in the month of April; and as the making up of overseers’ accounts takes place on the 25th of March, it was thought better in each instance to take the period nearest to the date of the census, which will account for the years being put in this way.

In the township of Chorlton-on-Medlock, almost exclusively a manufacturing suburb, the expenditure has been,
[table]
[table]

A striking and most important difference appears in the expenditure of another township (Broughton), in which there are few or no manufactures to employ the poor; showing that the poor rates fall much heavier on an agricultural than on a manufacturing population :—

In connection with these statistics, which are intended to communicate, in as concise a form as possible, a correct view of the condition of the people of the principal manufacturing town of Great Britain, it is important to exhibit some data as to the state of crime in the district; and the following table affords that information in an authentic form. It should be premised, that the gaol for the hundred is situated in Manchester, and that the total population of the hundred was, in 1831, 429,602.
[7:14:227]

Statement of the Number of Prisoners Tried and Convicted at the New Bailey Court-House, Salford, in the following Years :
[table]
[table]

The towns of Manchester and Salford are governed by a boroughreeve and constables, elected, the former by a jury summoned to the court of Sir Oswald Mosley, the lord of the manor, and the latter at a court of the Earl of Sefton, the high steward. The two towns have also police acts, and a representative body of police commissioners, elected in Manchester by persons having a high qualification, and in Salford by the rate payers at large. Such is also the case with the township of Chorlton-upon-Medlock; whilst in Ardwick, all persons occupying premises of the yearly value of L.30, and in Hulme all occupants to the value of L.30, are capable of qualifying as commissioners.

Manchester possesses large gas-works, which are important, inasmuch as the profits accruing from them (in 1835 nearly L.I4,000) are expended upon those improvements which tend so much to the health, the comfort, and the ornament of a densely-peopled town.

The gigantic undertakings of the celebrated Duke of Bridgewater, who may without exaggeration be styled the parent of canal navigation in England, had their centre in Manchester. In succeeding years the example so nobly set was rapidly followed, and Manchester has the advantage of a connexion, as direct as canal and river navigation conjoined can afford, with Liverpool, Hull, Goole, London, Lancaster, and indeed all the great sea-ports and inland commercial towns. It is remarkable that this district should have been the first to manifest the immense importance of railway communication. The history of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, from its infancy to its present state of maturity and unexampled excellence, is familiar to the whole world. Branching from the main road, there are lines to Bolton, Wigan, Warrington, St Helen’s, &c.; and that to Warrington will shortly be incorporated in the Liverpool and Birmingham railway, the road having been purchased to form a part of the great line now constructing. A line is also in course of formation, by which railroad communication may be had with Preston, a rising town in the cotton manufacture; and thence the northern districts will speedily, no doubt, carry forward the communication towards Scotland. Another line is now in active progress directly from Manchester to Bolton, to which a degree of importance exceeding the mere abstract extent of the undertaking attaches, inasmuch as it runs in the same line with the canal to Bolton, and, in fact, both are the property of the same proprietors. It is understood that the two lines of carriage, by land and water, will be worked conjointly, the railroad for passengers and certain descriptions of merchandise, the canal for other descriptions of merchandise; and from these operations the public will be enabled to form ’a just conclusion on the very important and still undetermined point, whether, and in what circumstances, canals are capable of successful competition with railways. During the session of parliament 1836 a bill was obtained to authorize the construction of a railroad from Manchester to Leeds.

Manchester has been the birth-place, or abode, or central point of action, of many eminent men. In remoter times the names of Hugh Oldham, Bradford, Booker, Dee (the astrologer), Whitaker (the historian), Byrom (a poet, and the inventor of a system of short-hand), Worthington, Percival, Ogden, Hugh Manchester, Humphrey Chetham, Heyrick, Lord Delamere, Bancroft, Barlow, and Crabtree, hold a prominent place? in the history of the town and its connexions. Amongst ⅛he illustrious of modern days, the commercial metropolis may claim as her own the eccentric Duke of Bridgewater. Mr Thomas Henry, though not born in Manchester, spent his life there; and his attainments as a chemist were brought into beneficial exercise upon the cotton manufacture of the country, in the discovery of most important improvements in the art of dyeing, through the operation of mordaunts, and by simplifying and applying practically to manufactures the discovery of M.Berthollet in regard to the qualities of oxymuriatic acid, a discovery by which the time occupied in the process of bleaching calicoes has been reduced from days to hours. The late Sir Robert Peel, though born near Blackburn, and a resident of Bury, had his mercantile establishment in Manchester, and was probably the most extensive merchant of his day, excepting perhaps Sir Richard Arkwright. Dr Dalton, also, though born in Cumberland, has spent his life from the age of twenty-six or thereabouts in Manchester, whither he went originally from Kendal on his appointment to the post of professor of mathematics and natural [7:14:228]philosophy at the Manchester New College, an institution which was subsequently removed to and is still in existence at York. The doctor is now, and has been for many years, president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, through which many of his most valued discoveries have been communicated to the world.

The municipal government of the township of Manchester is committed to the boroughreeve and two constables, who are elected at the court-leet of the lord of the manor, Sir Oswald Mosley, Bart. The boroughreeve exercises the power, without enjoying any of the external distinctions, usually pertaining to a mayor. There is an effective police establishment, under the direction of 240 commissioners elected by the occupants of tenements of a certain annual value.

Manchester has a considerable number of associations for the cultivation of science and literature, and the promotion of education. The Royal Manchester Institution ranks first in importance, the inhabitants having expended about L.30,000 in the erection of a noble edifice for periodical exhibitions of paintings, the delivery of lectures, &c. leaving themselves unhappily almost without the means of fulfilling the purposes for which the building was raised. An excellent Natural History Society is in a flourishing state; a Mechanics’ Institute receives extensive support; the town boasts a Concert Hall, having an income of L.3000 per annum; there are two schools of medicine, the elder of which (the Pine Street) has attained to considerable celebrity, and has recently obtained the patronage of the king; and amongst the numerous public libraries is one to which free access is afforded, and which has a large and most valuable collection of books, ancient and modern. This is the library attached to that antique structure Chetham’s Hospital, or the College (now so called), an institution founded two centuries ago, by the man whose name it bears, for the maintenance, education, and apprenticing of a number of boys, the offspring of poor parents. The Grammar School is another of the ancient foundations which do honour to the town; in late years its funds have so far increased as recently to justify the erection of a second school, in which a course of general education may be gratuitously obtained, whilst the parent building is still devoted to the diffusion of classical knowledge. The school has the advantage of several “exhibitions.” The recent inquiry into the public charities of England includes a very large return of charitable bequests still existent within the hundred of Salford, and of these Manchester has its full share. The town also supports, with a most liberal hand, medical institutions for the cure of almost every disease incident to humanity. At the head of these stands the Royal Infirmary, where, since its establishment in 1752, no less than 576,859 patients have been treated; four thousand accidents are annually brought under the attention of its medical officers; and the patients in the different wards of the infirmary average about 180 weekly. There are also a Ladies’ Jubilee Charity, a School for the Deaf and Dumb, and (in course of erection jointly with the deaf and dumb institution) a Blind Asylum, which had its foundation in a bequest of L.40,000 made several years ago by Mr Henshaw, a wealthy inhabitant of Oldham; the condition of its application to that benevolent object being, that no part of the sum should be expended in the erection or furnishing of the building, but that the latter should be provided by the inhabitants. After considerable delay,about L,9000have been subscribed; and the asylum is now in course of erection on the outskirts of the town. Other institutions for the relief of the afflicted and the distressed, for the promotion of education and the spread of religion, abound in Manchester, which indeed exhibits a prominent example of the almost profuse expenditure of wealth, hardly acquired, for philanthropic and useful purposes.

The foregoing sketch of the town of Manchester, and its hitherto unpublished statistics, are furnished by Mr James Wheeler, author of “Manchester, its Political, Social, and Commercial History, ancient and modern ;” to which work, and to the History of the County Palatine of Lancaster, by Edward Baines, we refer those who desire a more enlarged acquaintance with the modern history of this nationally important and industrious community.