The production of copper during this period was so plentiful, that, though the great mines in Anglesea were not yet discovered, full liberty was given to export it, except to France. From 1736 to 1745 the mines of Cornwall alone produced about 700 tons annually, and the yearly amount was constantly increasing. A manufactory of brassthe secret of which mixture was introduced from Germany, in 1649was established in Birmingham, in 1748; and, at the end of this period, the number of persons employed in making articles of copper and brass was, probably, not less than 50,000. The manufacture of tinned iron commenced in Wales about 1730, and in 1740 further improvements were made in this process. Similar improvements were making in the refinement of metals, and in the manufacture of silver plate, called Sheffield plate. English watches acquired great reputation, but afterwards fell into considerable disrepute from the employment of inferior foreign works. Printing types, which we had before imported from Holland, were first made in England in the reign of Queen Anne, by Caslon, an engraver of gun-locks and barrels. In 1725 William Ged, a Scotsman, discovered the art of stereotyping, but did not introduce it without strong opposition from the working printers. Great strides were made in the paper manufacture. In 1690 we first made white paper, and in 1713 it is calculated that 300,000 reams of all kinds of paper were made in England. An excise duty was first laid on paper in 1711. Our best china and earthenware were still imported, and, both in style and quality, our own pottery was very inferior, for Wedgwood had not yet introduced his wonderful improvements. Defoe introduced pantiles at his manufactory at Tilbury, before which time we imported them from Holland. The war with France compelled us to encourage the manufacture of glass; in 1697 the excise duty, imposed three years before, was repealed, but in 1746 duties were imposed on the articles used in its manufacture, and additional duties on its exportation. The manufacture of crown glass was not introduced till after this period.
When Parliament reassembled, Fox seized the very earliest moment to address the Chair and occupy the attention of the House. He rose at the unusually early hour of half-past two o'clock in the day, before the newly returned members had taken their oaths. Pitt himself was in this predicament, but, as soon as he had taken his oath, he rose to speak; but Fox contended that he was already in possession of the House, and, though Pitt announced that he had a message from the king, Fox persisted, and moved that the House should go into committee on the state of the nation. This allowed Pitt to speak, who declared that he had no objection to the committee; but he thought it more advisable to go into the question of India, on which subject he proposed to introduce a Bill. He then made some sharp remarks on the conduct of Fox in thus seizing, by artifice, a precedence in speaking, and on the petulance and clamour which the Opposition had displayed, and on the violent and unprecedented nature of their conduct, by which they hoped to inflame the spirit of the country and excite unnecessary jealousies. In truth, Fox and his party were now running a most unwise career. Possessed of a large majority, they were indignant that the king should have dismissed them, and thought that they could outvote the new Ministry, and drive them again from office. They had, no doubt, such a majority; but, at the same time, they had the king resolute against them. They had insulted him by their violent denunciations of his letter, and they had not, in their anger, the discernment to perceive that not only would this be made use of by their opponents to injure them, both in Parliament and out of it, but their proceeding with so much heat and violence was calculated to make them appear factiousmore concerned for their places than for the interests of the country. All this took place; the king and Ministry saw how all this would operate, and calmly awaited its effects. Fox and his party were, however, blind to the signs of the times, and carried no less than five resolutions against the Government.GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI.
COSTUMES OF THE PERIOD OF GEORGE II.The whole mode of coming into possession of these papers has something in it revolting to all honourable minds. Franklin, aware of this, insisted that they should not be printed nor made public, but only circulated amongst a select few. But the same motives which had induced Franklin to break his pledged secrecy, operated on the Assembly. They determined to make them public, and therefore pretended that other copies of them had reached them from England, and that they were thus absolved from all conditions of secrecy. This was totally false. The story was invented for the occasion, and the letters, without the name of Whately, to whom they had been addressed, were published by the Assembly. It was left to be inferred by the public, that they had been sent officially to England by the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, and the Assembly voted the writing of them ample evidence of a fixed design on the part of the British Government to destroy the Constitution and establish arbitrary power. A petition was dispatched to be presented by Franklin to the king, calling for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver from their posts. When these letters were read under these false impressions, sentiments were found in them which assumed a wholly exaggerated character, and the flame produced was, as Franklin and the Assembly intended, of the most furious kind.The Marquis of Lansdowne, the President of the Council in the Whig Ministry which had replaced that of Sir Robert Peel, in a speech delivered in the House of Lords on the 25th of January, 1847, gave an estimate, as accurate as the best calculation could make it, of the loss in money value that had been occasioned by the failure of the crops in Ireland. "Taking a valuation of 10 per acre for potatoes, and 3 10s. for oats, the deficiency on the potato crop alone amounted to 11,350,000, while on the crop of oats it amounted to 4,660,000, or to a total value of 16,010,000 for the whole of a country which, if it could not be said to be the poorest, was certainty not one of the richest in the world. In[543] weight the loss was 9,000,000 or 10,000,000 tons of potatoes. The whole loss had been equivalent to the absolute destruction of 1,500,000 arable acres." On the same day, Lord John Russell, who had succeeded Peel as Prime Minister, gave a statement of what the Government had done during the recess for the relief of the Irish population, in pursuance of Acts passed in the previous Session. He stated that an immense staff of servants had been employed by the Board of Public Worksupwards of 11,000 personsgiving employment to half a million of labourers, representing 2,000,000 of souls; the expense for the month of January being estimated at from 700,000 to 800,000.It was in these grave circumstances that Lord North, on the 5th of March, 1770, brought forward his bill, based on the terms of Lord Hillsborough's letter to the American governors, to repeal all the import duties except that on tea. This was one of those half-and-half measures which never succeed; it abandoned the bulk of the duties, but retained the really obnoxious thingthe principle. Grenville very truly told them that they should retain the whole, or repeal the whole. Lord Barrington and Welbore Ellis, in their dogged Toryism, protested against repealing a single item of them; and the Opposition, Barr, Conway, Meredith, Pownall, etc., as earnestly entreated them to remove the duties altogether, and with them all cause of irritation. The motion for leave to bring in the bill was carried by two hundred and four votes to one hundred and forty-two. During the debates it was shown that, during the financial year, the American tea duties had producednot the calculated ten or twelve thousand, but less than three hundred pounds! For such a sum did our legislators risk a civil war. As a last effort on this question at this time, the Opposition, on the 1st of May, called for the correspondence with America; and, on the 9th, Burke moved nine resolutions on the general topic. They were not only negatived, but a similar motion, introduced into the Peers by the Duke of Richmond, met the same fate.[320]
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