ith a far greater facility than the older trades. Moreover,
England was free from the innumerable and vexatious local taxes and
restrictions prevalent in France and in the petty governments of
Germany. Although the major part of these foolish and pernicious
regulations has been long swept away from Germany and other
continental nations, the retarding influence they exercised, in common
with the wider national system of protection which still survives,
kept back the cotton industry, so that in Germany it still stands half
a century behind its place in England.[92]

The following figures show how substantial was the lead held by
England in the cotton manufacture a little before the middle of the
century.

NUMBER OF SPINDLES WORKING IN COTTON MILLS IN 1846.[93]

Spindles.
England and Wales 15,554,619
Scotland 1,727,871
Ireland 215,503
Austria and Italy 1,500,000
France 3,500,000
Belgium 420,000
Switzerland 650,000
Russia 7,585,000
United States 3,500,000
States of the Zollverein 815,000
----------
35,467,993

The development of the cotton industry in 1888 in the chief industrial
countries, as indicated by the consumption of raw cotton, is expressed
in the accompanying diagram.

Lastly, the national trade policy of England was of signal advantage
in her machine development. Her early protective system had, by the
enlargement of her carrying trade and the increase of her colonial
possessions, laid the foundation of a large complex trade with the
more distant parts of the world, though for a time it crippled our
European commerce. While we doubtless sacrificed other interests by
this course of policy, it must be generally admitted that "English
industries would not have advanced so rapidly without Protection."[94]
But as we built up our manufacturing industries by Protection, so we
undoubtedly conserved and strengthened them by Free Trade--first, by
the remission of tariffs upon the raw materials of manufacture and
machine-making, and later on by the free admission of food stuffs,
which were a prime essential to a nation destined to specialise in
manufacture. France, our chie