aim it, whilst pretending to impugn the retention of
the very shadow of a shade of the same principle, for the country, above
all others, which has grown to greatness under it--the very breath of
whose nostrils it has been, during the struggles of infancy and progress
to that full-blown maturity, when assuredly it seeks, (and need seek
only,) willingly proffers, and readily accepts, equality of
condition--reciprocity of interchange, with all the world. "The
Manchester manufacturer"--the false _nom-de-guerre_ of a calico printer,
who was not a manufacturer at all, and could scarcely distinguish a
calico from a cambric at the time of writing, who erst was, is yet,
perchance, the trumpeter of Russian policy, Russian principles, and
Russian progress in the East and elsewhere--must be grateful for the
information we have already afforded on the full careering ascendency of
Russian material interests also. His gratitude will expand as he
accompanies these pages.

Peter the Great laid the foundations of Russian manufactures, as of the
Russian empire itself. He founded manufactories in all the larger
cities. But with his death they fell into decay until the reign of
Elizabeth. With that epoch began their revival, and the more rigorous
revival also of the prohibitory system. Their present imposing
appearance and magnitude date, however, from the peace of 1815, the
great parent and promoter of all continental manufactures. In 1812 no
more than 2,332 manufacturing establishments in the whole empire were in
existence, employing 119,000 work-people; in 1835 the number of the
former had reached to 6,015, and of the latter to 279,673, the half of
the free labourers. At the beginning of 1839, says the report of the
department of manufactures and internal commerce--the last which,
hitherto, has been made up or come to our hands--the number of factories
and manufactories had risen to 6,855, an increase over the year
preceding of 405, whilst the number of workmen employed in them was
412,931, an increase over the year before of 35,111. Thus, in the space
of three years, from 1835 to the end of 1838, 810 new establishments had
been organized, and the number of workmen augmented by one-half. These
industrial establishments were non-inclusive of mining works, iron
works, &c., and the people employed in them. They were classed as
follows:--

Woollen manufactories, 606
Silk ib. 227
Cotton ib.