To these, in 1785, the Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright introduced a loom for weaving by water or steam power, which soon superseded hand-loom weaving. In 1803 Mr. H. Horrocks greatly improved this, and from this germ has grown up the system of weaving cottons, silks, and woollens by machinery. Add to this the application of similar machinery to calico-printing, and the like to weaving of lace, invented by Robert Frost, of Nottingham, or by a working mechanic of that town named Holmes, which afterwards received many improvements, and we have the varied means by which the manufacturing power of England was raised far above that of all the world; and which, reaching other countries in spite of legislative impediments, soon established similar manufactures in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and America. In Great Britain alone the importation of raw cotton was increased from 4,764,589 lbs. in 1771 to 151,000,000 lbs. in 1818; and such was the spread of trade of all kinds from the use of machinery, that our exports of manufactured goods in 1800, when the European nations were incapacitated for manufacturing by Napoleon's general embargo, amounted to £116,000,000.

Almost every other manufacture shared in this surprising impulse from machinery and the spirit of invention. It was an age of new creations and of unprecedented energies. In 1763 Josiah Wedgwood, of the Staffordshire Potteries, commenced that career of improvement in the biscuit, form, and printing of porcelain which constituted a new era in the art. At that time the French fine pottery was so much superior to the English that it was extensively imported. In fact, it was a period when taste in every department of art was at the lowest ebb. Wedgwood, being a good chemist, not only improved the body of his earthenware, but, being a man of classical taste, introduced a grace and elegance of form before unknown to British pottery. He invented a new kind of composition so hard and marble-like that it resisted both fire and acids; and in this he moulded statuettes, cameos, and medallions from the Greek originals, of great beauty. Sir William Hamilton having brought over from Italy a quantity of antique vases, etc., Wedgwood benefited by them to introduce fresh forms and colouring in his wares, and probably on this account called his pottery-works Etruria. He had the aid of Mr. Chisholm, a practical chemist, in his researches into the best composition and colours for his porcelain, and his improvements laid the foundation of the great pottery trade of Staffordshire.

Many improvements were made also in the glass manufacture during this reign, and more would undoubtedly have been made but for the very heavy duties upon it to help to support the ruinous wars of the period. In 1760, the first year of the reign, crown glass is said to have been introduced. In 1763 the first glass plates for looking-glasses and coach-windows were made at Lambeth. In 1779 flint-glass was first made; and about that time plate-glass. The duties on different kinds of glass at that date were about one hundred and forty thousand pounds per annum. So oppressive were those duties that, in 1785, the St. Helens Plate-glass Company petitioned Parliament, stating that, in consequence of the weight of taxation, notwithstanding an expenditure of one hundred thousand pounds, they had not been able to declare a dividend.

The introduction of the steam-engine, railroads, and canals enabled the coal-miners during this reign to extend the supply of coals enormously. In 1792 the coal-mines of Durham and Northumberland alone maintained twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty persons, and employed a capital of three million one hundred and thirty thousand pounds—a very small amount of both people and money as compared with the workers and capital engaged in the trade since the expansion of the manufacturing and steam systems. The coal-fields of Durham and Northumberland extend to nearly eight hundred square miles, but the beds in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, the Midland Counties, South of Scotland, and Ireland, are still immense and not yet fully explored. Fresh strata are discovered as steam power enables us to go deeper. In 1817 Sir Humphry Davy perfected his safety-lamp, which, by means of a simple wire gauze, enabled the miner to work amid the most explosive gases. These lamps, however, were not able to protect the colliers from their own carelessness, and most horrible destruction, from time to time, took place amongst them from neglect.

With the reign of George III. commenced a series of improvements in the manufacture of iron, which have led not only to a tenfold production of that most useful of metals, but to changes in its quality which before were inconceivable. Towards the end of the reign of George II. the destruction of the forests in smelting iron-ore was so great as to threaten their extinction, and with it the manufacture of iron in Britain. Many manufacturers had already transferred their businesses to Russia, where wood was abundant and cheap. It was then found that coke made from coal was a tolerable substitute for charcoal, and, in 1760, the very first year of the reign of George III., the proprietors of the Carron Works in Scotland began the use of pit-coal. Through the scientific aid of Smeaton and Watt, they applied water-, and afterwards steam-power, to increase the blast of their furnaces to make it steady and continuous, instead of intermitting as from bellows; and they increased the height of their chimneys. By these means, Dr. John Roebuck, the founder of these works, became the first to produce pig iron by the use of coal. This gave great fame to the Carron Works, and they received large orders from Government for cannon and cannon-balls. It was some time, however, before enough iron could be produced to meet the increasing demand for railroads, iron bridges, etc.; and so late as 1781 fifty thousand tons were imported annually from Russia and Sweden.

JAMES WATT. (After the Portrait by Sir W. Beechey, R.A.)

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The employment of pit-coal had not reached perfection, and in 1785 the Society of Arts offered a premium for the making of fine bar iron with pit-coal. This object was accomplished by Mr. Cort, an iron-founder of Gloucestershire, by exposing the pig iron on the hearth of a reverberatory furnace to the flame of pit-coal. This process was improved into what was called puddling, in puddling or reverberatory furnaces. Cort also introduced the drawing out of iron between cylindrical rollers; but he became ruined in his experiments, and other iron-masters of more capital came in to reap the profit. Many years passed before a pension was conferred on some of his children for his services. In 1755 the whole population of Carron was only one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four; in 1795 the workmen alone employed in the works were one thousand, the population four thousand, when the foundry had five blast furnaces, sixteen air furnaces, three cupola furnaces, and consumed one hundred and thirty-six tons of coals daily. It supplied to the Government eleven thousand tons annually of cannon, mortars, shot, shells, etc.; to the East India Company six thousand tons; and to all customers together twenty-six thousand tons. The growth of the iron trade in Great Britain, through these improvements, may be seen from the fact that in 1802 there were one hundred and sixty-eight blast furnaces, producing two hundred and twenty thousand tons of iron; in 1820 the annual production of iron was four hundred thousand tons; in 1845 the production was calculated at twice that amount—that is, in twenty-five years the production had doubled itself. In 1771 the use of wire ropes, instead of hempen ones, was suggested by M. Bougainville, and this was made a fact by Captain Brown, in 1811. Before this, in 1800, Mr. Mushet, of Glasgow, discovered the art of converting malleable iron, or iron ore, into cast steel; and in 1804 Samuel Lucas, of Sheffield, further extended the benefit by the discovery of a mode of converting any castings from pig iron at once into malleable iron, or cast steel, so that knives, forks, snuffers, scythes, and all kinds of articles, were converted into steel, "without any alterative process whatever between the blast furnace and the melting-pot." In 1815 it was calculated that two hundred thousand persons were employed in manufacturing articles of iron, the annual value of which was ten million pounds.