YORK

Yorkshire are collected and carried off by the Ouse,as those of several of the inland counties more to thesouth are discharged by the Trent. The Humber,resembling the trunk of a vast tree, spreading itsbranches in every direction, commands, by the nume-rous rivers which it receives, the navigation and tradeof a very extensive and commercial part of England.

The important rank which the manufactures ofthis county have long maintained in the estimationof the world, and their manifest utility in furnishingemployment and support for a great part of ourpopulation, and in supplying the comforts and conve-niences of life, has often been the subject of just andwell merited commendation. It is evident, on takinga comparative view of our present and former condi-tion, that the improvement of manufactures hasalways preceded the progress of opulence and theincrease of wealth.

Wool, the staple commodity of England, whichnow employs so large a portion of our manufacturingskill, was in former times sent abroad, and returnedto England in a manufactured state. Germany fur-nished our ancestors with hardware; now the hard-ware of Sheffield and Birmingham has an unrivalledmarket in all parts of Europe, Asia, and America.For the looking-glasses, papers, and silks of France,for the carpets of Turkey and Persia, for the porce-lain and wares of China, for the clocks and watchesof Germany, and the glass of Italy, our artificers cansubstitute such productions as are little, if at all, in-ferior in materials or execution, in elegance of designor cheapness. The superiority of our manufactures,in a national point of view, over other objects oftrading speculation, is equally certain, whether thematerials are produced at home or imported into thiscountry from abroad; but, in the former case, theyare more profitable than the latter; for then thewhole labour employed for their cultivation andmanufacture is divided among people of our ownnation, and they exclusively share all the profits.Thus, in the instance of wool, it is made into broad-cloth, which, before it reaches the consumer, under-goes a great variety of operations, and passes througha hundred different hands, so that there is no pro-duce whatever, the benefits of which can be morewidely diffused among the industrious part of thecommunity. “ Suppose,” says Mr. Chitty, in hisTreatise on the Laws of Commerce and Manufactures,“ the value of English wool produced in one year toamount to three millions, the expense of working itup into various articles to be nine, its total valuewhen manufactured will amount to twelve. Supposethe annual exportation from this country to amountto three millions, and the number of persons main-tained by the manufacture to be a million, let it beconsidered that these persons expend what they earnin all the necessaries of life, and that the procuringof such necessaries is a source of employment andprofit to the other members of the community; andthen we may judge what an immense addition ismade to the national stock of industry and gain bythis valuable article, even without taking into accountthe sailors employed to export the various articlesinto which it is wrought, and the artificers of machinesused to accelerate many parts of the manufactures.So, next in point of importance to manufactureswhich are produced from materials raised in thiscountry, may be ranked those which are composedof raw materials imported into England from other

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nations, and are either reserved for domestic use, orexported for foreign consumption. The advantagesof these are, that they preclude the necessity offoreign manufactures, prevent the balance of tradefrom inclining against us, and secure those profitswhich must necessarily arise from the manufacturepassing entirely through the hands of our country-men.”

There is, perhaps, no single circumstance whichdistinguishes our country so remarkably from allothers, as the vast extent to which we have carriedour contrivances of tools and machines for formingall those conveniences, of which so large a quantityis consumed by almost every class of the community.The amount of patient thought, of repeated experi-ment, of happy exertion of genius, by which ourvarious manufactures have been created and carriedto their present excellence, is scarcely to be imagined.If we look around the rooms we inhabit, or throughthese storehouses of every convenience, of every lux-ury that man can desire, which deck the crowdedstreets of our larger towns and cities, we shall find inthe history of each article of every fabric a series offailures which have gradually led the way to excel-lence ; and we shall notice, in the art of making eventhe most insignificant articles, processes calculated toexcite our admiration by their simplicity, or to rivetour attention by their unlooked-for results.

The establishment of manufactures in the WestRiding has been the principal cause of its presentwealth. It is difficult to ascertain the period whenthey were first introduced, but there is reason to sup-pose it was about the beginning of the fifteenth cen-tury. Camden, in his Britannia, fixes the introduc-tion of manufactures to have been during the reignsof Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth. Thisera may, however, be suspected ; for there is a copyof a court-roll still extant, dated at the court of theprior of Lewes, held at Halifax on the Thursdayafter the feast of St. Thomas, 2 Henry the Fifth,1414, wherein Richard de Sunderland, and Joan hiswife, surrendered into the hands of the lord of themanor, an enclosure at Halifax, called the TenterCroft; which is a strong presumption that manufac-tures were carried on there before that period.

The country is admirably adapted for carrying onmanufactures. The raw materials are abundant onevery hand ; and coals, which are indispensably ne-cessary, are plentiful and cheap. The ground in thevicinity of the manufacturing towns has in generalbeen originally barren, and in many parts little betterthan waste ; but from the great increase of popula-tion, and the additional quantity of manure occasionedby the manufactures, the soil is now equal in valueto that of places originally more fertile. The staplecommodities of the county are wool and cotton ; theformer is particularly deserving notice, from the ex-tent of the manufactures connected with it.

The county of York now sends six members to theBritish parliament, which, with the population, arethus divided between the different ridings.

The North Riding has a population of 190,873persons, and sends two members. The polling-placesare, York, Malton, Scarborough, Whitby, Stokesby,Guisborough, Romaldkirk, Richmond, Askrigg,Thirsk, Northallerton, and Kirby Moor Side. The courtfor the election of the knight of the shire is at York.

The East Riding has a population of 204,008 per-sons, and sends two members. The polling-places