ome manufacture they never could produce a quality of yarn equally
saleable in the home market with other yarn of the same counts, and
nominally classed of the same quality. The principal reason was, that they
spun with machinery solely adapted for a particular trade, and the
production of quantity was more an object than first-rate quality; to
these ends their machinery was suited, and to have produced a first-rate
article, extensive and expensive alterations in that machinery would have
been required. Mr Lee himself, the managing partner, was an ingenious and
theoretically scientific man, and often experimentalizing, but in general
practically with little success. When, therefore, the export trade in
yarns fell off, as, in some years during the war and the continental
system of Bonaparte, we believe it was almost entirely suspended, the
yarns so described of this firm, and of any others the same, could find no
vent--abroad no opening--at home not suited for the consumption. As the
firm were extremely wealthy the accumulation of stock was, however, of
small inconvenience; time was no object, the Continent was not always
sealed. With the great spinner Arkwright the case was entirely different;
at home as abroad his yarn products were always first in demand; his
qualities unequalled; his prices far above all others of even the first
order; his machinery of the most finished construction. If, perchance,
home demand flagged, the export never failed to compensate in a great
degree.

So with all other subdivisions of the same or other manufactures, more or
less. And this may explain the seeming phenomenon why; when the foreign
trade has been so prostrate as we have seen it during the last three years,
the home trade did not cease to be almost as prosperous as before.
Political economy would arbitrarily insist that, repelled from the foreign
market, or suffering from a cessation of foreign demand, the manufacturer
for exportation had only to direct his attention, carry his stocks to, and
hasten to swell competition and find relief in, the home market. In
products requiring little skill, such as common calicoes, such efforts
might, to some extent, be successful; but there the invasion ends. In all
the departments requiring greater skill, more perfect machinery, more
taste, and the peculiar arts of finish which long practice alone can give,
the old accustomed manufacturer for the home trade remains without a rival,
still prosper