actures was
steady, but it continued to be slow; they gave employment as yet to but
a small part of the population, and added in no great degree to the
national wealth. The wool-trade remained the largest, as it was the
oldest of them; it had gradually established itself in Norfolk, the West
Riding of Yorkshire, and the counties of the south-west; while the
manufacture of cotton was still almost limited to Manchester and Bolton,
and though winning on its rival remained so unimportant that in the
middle of the eighteenth century the export of cotton goods hardly
reached the value of fifty thousand a year. There was the same slow and
steady progress in the linen trade of Belfast and Dundee, and the silks
of Spitalfields. But as yet textile manufactures contributed little to
the national resources; nor did these resources owe much to the working
of our minerals. The coal trade was small, and limited by the cost of
carriage as well as by ignorance of any mode of employing coal in
iron-smelting. On the other hand the scarcity of wood, which was used
for that purpose, limited the production of iron. In 1750 only eighteen
thousand tons were produced in England; and four-fifths of its iron
goods were imported from Sweden. Nor did there seem any likelihood of a
rapid change. Skilled labour was scarce; and the processes of
manufacture were too rude to allow any large increase of production. It
was only where a stream gave force to turn a mill-wheel that the
wool-worker could establish his factory; and cotton was as yet spun by
hand in the cottages, the "spinsters" of the family sitting with their
distaffs round the weaver's hand-loom.

[Sidenote: Canals.]

But even had the processes of production become more efficient, they
would have been rendered useless by the inefficiency of the means of
distribution. The older main roads, which had lasted fairly through the
Middle Ages, had broken down in later times before the growth of traffic
and the increase of wagons and carriages. The new lines of trade lay
often along mere country lanes which had never been more than
horse-tracks, and to drive heavy wains through lanes like these was all
but impossible. Much of the woollen trade therefore had to be carried on
by means of long trains of pack-horses; and in most cases the cost of
carriage added heavily to the price of production. In the case of yet
heavier goods, such as coal, distribution was almost impracticable, save
along the grea