and had reached a great
production. Until 1740 wood only had been used for the smelting of iron;
after that year coal was applied successfully. In 1788 the produce was
several thousand tons; in. 1800 it was one hundred and eighty thousand;
in 1851 it reached the enormous amount of two millions and a half. Iron
and steel were brought into use for the most excellent tools, as well
as for the works in which they have been employed. This branch of
improvement made a remarkable progress, little known beyond the circles
of men of science and artizans. It has been correctly observed that the
calculating machine of Mr. Babbage could not have been executed by
means of the imperfect tools which were formerly in the hands of our
machinists. We are indebted to the efforts made for the completion of
that apparatus for some of the most beautiful tools.

The marvellous increase of our cotton, woollen, and silk manufactures,
more especially, strikingly illustrate the general law of material
progress with the increase of population. To give the details of these
statistics would be entering upon a subject too extensive for our
limits, but the reader would find them an interesting accompaniment to
the population reports of 1851.

IRELAND.

The year 1851 was singularly free from agitation in Ireland; still the
social condition of that country was not free from its usual elements of
disturbance. The papal scheme for establishing a territorial hierarchy
in England, caused in Ireland an extraordinary degree of exultation.
Addresses from the altars, and through the columns of the press,
testified the sacerdotal enthusiasm that the event enkindled. The
opposition of Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, and others--who either
openly espoused Puseyism or had an inclination towards its dogmas--to
the ecclesiastical titles bill greatly encouraged the priest party
in Ireland. Yet the Irish and English Roman Catholic laity had little
sympathy. O'Connell had often publicly declared that the aristocratic
predilections of the English Roman Catholic gentry, and their prejudice
against the Irish people, of all sects and parties, made them a dead
weight upon the Roman Catholic cause, to which his party tact and _ad
captandum_ oratory had given buoyancy. He had thoroughly indoctrinated
the Irish Roman Catholic laity, and even the older clergy, with
this view. The younger members of the priesthood were so thoroughly
ultra-montane, that they, without co