farming system. Immense tracts of mountain land, that were formerly either wholly useless, or appropriated only to the depasturing of the half-starved oxen of the glens for a few months in summer, have been made, through its agency, considerably productive. The increase of food, and other accommodations thence resulting, has not been confined to any particular class or order. It has been a truly national benefit; and has redounded, despite the violence with which it was, in a few instances, forced upon the poor occupiers, as much to their advantage as to that of the landlords.

It has been repeatedly objected to the change now noticed, that it has depopulated the Highlands, and forced the inhabitants to seek an asylum in foreign countries; but it is hardly necessary to say, that a system of farming, which has added most materially to the supply of produce in a country, cannot, whatever other effects it may have, occasion any diminution of population. Now, no one doubts that this has been a consequence of the introduction of sheep-farming into the Highlands; so that the fallacy of the objections alluded to is seen at a glance. Perhaps, however, it may be thought, that though, in consequence of the increase of exportable produce from the Highlands, the population of the other parts of the empire may have been increased, the inhabitants of that district may, notwithstanding, have been diminished: but, provided the population of the empire be not injuriously affected, its distribution is of inferior consequence. In point of fact, however, there has been no falling off in the population of the Highlands; on the contrary, it has increased very decidedly since the epoch when sheep-farming began to be introduced. This is obvious from the following returns of the population of the principal sheep counties:

Hence, instead of declining, it appears that the population of the principal Highland counties has increased 100,183 since 1755, and 71,949 since 1801! And this, after all, is only what a more unprejudiced inquiry into the circumstances would have led any one to anticipate. The inhabitants, instead of being scattered over the country, have been collected into villages and towns; and, from being lazy half-employed petty farmers and cottiers, numbers have been converted into comparatively industrious artisans, fishermen, &c. The proprietors, in consequence of the immense increase of their rentals, have been enabled and stimulated to undertake the most expensive improvements; and their efforts have been so well seconded by the new class of tenantry, that a totally different appearance has been given to the entire country. There is, also, a decidedly greater demand for labour, and more people employed than at any former period; with a proportional increase in the quantity of work done, and of the pro

ducts brought to market. The condition of the people has, at the same time, been signally improved; and, instead of those frequently recurring famines that used to spread disease and death over large portions of the country, scarcity is now as little prevalent in most Highland districts as in the lowlands.

5. Present State of Agriculture. It was supposed by many, that the extraordinary improvement in the agriculture of Scotland, during the late war, being mainly owing to the high prices that then prevailed, the heavy fall of prices that took place subsequently to the renewed intercourse with the Continent in 1814, would check its further progress. Luckily, however, this anticipation has not been realised. No doubt, the shock occasioned by the fall alluded to was as severe as it was sudden and unlooked for by most persons; and, in the first instance, was productive of much distress, and the ruin of many landlords in embarrassed circumstances, and of tenants paying money rents, calculated on the footing that the high prices that had prevailed during the previous half dozen years would be permanent. This, however, was not the situation of the great body of the agriculturists; and, while the fall was comparatively little felt by them, it was highly advantageous to the manufacturing and commercial classes; no inconsiderable portion of the wonderful progress made in manufactures and commerce since 1814 being clearly ascribable to the fall in the cost of necessaries. It is impossible, too, that agriculture can be long depressed where manufactures and commerce are flourishing; and in a brief period it began to revive. The property tax, which pressed severely on the land, was struck off; rents, where necessary, were reduced; and the farmers exerted themselves to meet the new order of things by fresh efforts of industry, and by proscribing every useless

expense.

These efforts have been powerfully promoted by the formation of improved means of communication. We have already had occasion to exhibit some of the effects of the opening of new roads (antè, p. 306., &c.); and the establishment of steam-packets has been quite as important. They have brought most of the great markets in the kingdom within reach of the occupiers in some of the remotest districts. The farmers of the east coast of Scotland, as far north as the Moray Frith, are now able to send up full-fed cattle and sheep to London at a fourth part of the expense, and in a tenth part of the time, that was formerly required to send them up half fed to the Norfolk fairs; at the same time that a new and boundless market is created for all other sorts of agricultural produce. The same machinery has opened an equally easy access to the great markets of Liverpool and Manchester for the farmers of Dumfriesshire, Galloway, Ayrshire, and generally of all the west of Scotland. The advantages accruing from this have been, both directly and indirectly, of the greatest importance; and, in some places, have more than countervailed the fall of prices.

The recent introduction of bone manure into Scotland has also been of the very highest value. Bone mills are now erected in most parts of the country; and large quantities of dust are imported. Its influence in increasing the crops of turnips and corn, and, conse

quently, the supply of butcher's meat and of farm manure, has been quite astonishing. The facility, too, of its carriage has permitted many hilly and comparatively inaccessible districts to be improved at a comparatively small cost.

Next to the introduction of bone manure, or, perhaps, before it, the extension of drainage, and principally of the newly imported practice of furrow draining, has been the greatest of the recent improvements made in Scotch agriculture. Large tracts, that were formerly com paratively unproductive, have been, through its means, rendered capable of bearing heavy crops. Every where, indeed, a spirit of improvement is diffused; and the land is not only rendered more suitable for the production of most sorts of produce, but is better cultivated, and subjected to rotations better suited to its capacities. No doubt, therefore, the quantity of corn, butcher's meat, &c. at present raised in Scotland vastly exceeds the quantity raised in 1814, or at any former period; and there are good grounds for thinking that prices might be reduced, even below their present low level, without materially retarding the progress of agriculture.

CHAPTER II.-MINES AND MINERALS.

THE mineral riches of Great Britain, if not superior, are at least equal to those of any other country. We cannot, it is true, boast of mines of gold or silver; but we possess what is of still more importance to a manufacturing nation, an all but inexhaustible supply of the most excellent coal. Iron, the most useful of all the metals, is found in the greatest abundance, and of an exceedingly good quality, in most parts of the empire. Our tin mines are the most productive of any in Europe; and we have also very productive and valuable mines of copper, lead, manganese, &c. Our salt springs, and beds of fossil salt, are alone sufficient to supply the whole world for an indefinite period.

The most valuable minerals are situated in the western and northern parts of England; and in the southern and middle parts of Scotland. The English mines are by far the most important. Were a straight line drawn from the Isle of Portland, in Dorsetshire, to Rugby in Warwickshire, and thence to Hartlepool, on the coast of Durham, the country to the east of it would be found to be destitute of coal, copper, tin, lead, salt, &c. Iron is, indeed, found in various places to the eastward of the line now mentioned; but, owing to the want of coal, it is not wrought. This district may, therefore, as compared with the other parts of the country, be said to be destitute of minerals; and, to a considerable extent, also, of those branches of industry for the successful prosecution of which an abundant supply of minerals is necessary.

We begin our notices of the different minerals with that of coal, by far the most important and valuable of them all.

1. COAL.It is hardly possible to exaggerate the advantages

England derives from her vast beds of coal. In this climate, fuel ranks among the principal necessaries of life; and it is to our coal mines that we owe abundant and cheap supplies of so indispensable an article. Had they not existed, wood must have been used as fuel; and it is quite impossible that any attention to the growth of timber could have furnished a supply equal to the wants of the present population of Great Britain, even though a large proportion of the cultivated land had been appropriated to the raising of trees. But, however great and signal, this is not the only advantage we derive from our coal mines: they are the principal source and foundation of our manufacturing and commercial prosperity. Since the invention of the steam-engine, coal has become of the highest importance as a moving power; and no nation, however favourably situated in other respects, not plentifully supplied with this mineral, need hope to rival those that are, in most branches of manufacturing industry. To what is the astonishing increase of Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, &c., and the camparatively stationary or declining state of Canterbury, Winchester, Salisbury, and other towns in the south of England, to be ascribed? It cannot be pretended, with any show of reason, that the inhabitants of the former are naturally more ingenious, enterprising, or industrious, than those of the latter. The abundance and cheapness of coal in the north, and its scarcity, and consequent high price, in the south, is the real cause of this striking discrepancy. The citizens of Manchester, Glasgow, &c. are able, at a comparatively small expense, to put the most powerful and complicated machinery in motion; and to produce results quite beyond the reach of those who have not the same command over coal, or, as it has been happily defined, "hoarded labour." Our coal mines have been sometimes called the Black Indies; and it is certain that they have conferred a thousand times more real advantage on us than we have derived from the conquest of the Mogul empire, or than we should have reaped from the dominion of Mexico and Peru. They have supplied our manufacturers and artisans with a power of unbounded energy and easy of control; and enabled them to overcome difficulties insurmountable by those to whom nature has been less liberal of her choicest gifts.

Consumption of Coal in Great Britain. It is uncertain when coal first began to be used amongst us as fuel: probably it did not long precede the 13th century. In 1281, however, Newcastle is noticed as having some trade in this article. In the reign of Edward I. its use, in London, was prohibited, because of the supposed injurious influence of its smoke. This prohibition was renewed at several subsequent periods, but to no purpose. Experience showed that the smoke was not deleterious; while the growing scarcity, and consequently, increased price, of timber, and the superiority of coal as an article of fuel, secured its ascendency in despite of every obstacle. Since the reign of Charles I., it has become almost the only description of fuel used in London, and in most other towns and districts throughout the kingdom. The consumption of coal in Great Britain is immense. It was recently estimated by Mr. Taylor, an experienced coal owner and en

We suspect, however, that this estimate is a great deal under the mark. The yearly importation of water-borne coal into the port of London amounts, at present, to about 2,630,000 tons. The population of the district that derives its principal supply from this source amounts to about 2,400,000, or 2,500,000, giving an annual consumption of nearly a ton to each individual. There are, no doubt, several very extensive gas works, breweries, &c. in London, in which large quantities of coal are consumed; and the population may be reckoned more opulent, and, consequently, able to consume more fuel than that of most other parts of the kingdom. But, on the other hand, the comparatively high price of coal in the metropolis and its vicinity reduces its consumption by the middle and lower classes considerably below the level of the consumption of the same classes in Lancashire and other coal counties. The accurate researches of Dr. Cleland show that, in 1831, when the population was 202,000, the consumption of coal in Glasgow amounted to 437,000 tons. We believe we shall make a liberal allowance for the coal consumed in cotton factories, and other public works of a description not carried on in London, if we estimate it at 225,000 tons; which would leave 212,000 tons, or more than a ton for each individual for the domestic consumption of the city. - (New Statistical Account of Scotland, No. 7. p. 162.) On the whole, therefore, we should be disposed to think that, including the consumption of coal in gas works, breweries, distilleries, brick-works, soap-works, sugar-refineries, bakehouses, and such sort of businesses as are carried on in the valley of the Thames, the consumption of Great Britain may be estimated at nearly the same rate, or at about a ton of coal for each individual, exclusive of the consumption in iron-works and other great branches of manufacture. This would give above 18,000,000 tons for what may be called the domestic consumption of the island; though, to be within the mark, we shall take it at only 17,000,000 tons. domestic consumption of coal in Scotland, in 1813, is estimated in the General Report (vol. i. p. 66.), at 2,000,000 tons; the population being, at the time, under 1,900,000. But to this quantity many very large additions have to be made.

The

The quantity of iron annually produced in Great Britain may be taken at 800,000 tons; and the quantity of coal required, at an average, to produce each ton of iron, including that used by engines, &c., may be estimated at 5 tons; giving a total of 4,000,000 tons consumed in the making of iron. According to Mr. Kennedy, the quantity of coal consumed in the cotton manufacture, in 1817, was upwards of 500,000 tons; and the manufacture has since more than doubled; so that, allowing for greater economy, we may fairly estimate the consumption of coal in the cotton trade at 800,000 tons a year. Its consumption in the woollen, linen, and silk trades cannot be less than 600,000 tons. The quantity of copper ore annually smelted in Great Britain amounts to about 185,000 tons; and it is supposed that about 21 tons of coal are required to smelt each ton of ore, making the total consumption in this department equal to 462,500 tons. It is generally believed that the brass and copper manufactures require nearly as much coal as the copper smelting. In the salt-works of Cheshire, Worcestershire, &c. the consumption is probably not under, if it do