practical skill in mechanics. At last he obtained pecuniary assistance to enable him to build a factory, but being driven from Lancashire by fear of violence from those who earned their subsistence by the old mode of spinning, he removed to Nottingham. In 1769 he obtained a patent for spinning with rollers; and in 1771 he took out a second patent, for a new system of carding and roving by machinery. In 1786 Mr. Arkwright was knighted, and in the following year he was high sheriff of Derbyshire.

Since the dissolution of Sir Richard Arkwright's patent, in 1785, further improvements have been made in the cotton manufacture. The mule jenny, so called from its being a compound of the jenny and spinning-frame, invented by Mr. Crompton, and the power-loom, invented by the Rev. Mr. Cartwright, are machines that have had the most powerful influence on this branch of industry. In consequence of their introduction the price of cotton cloth has been enormously reduced; but as the demand for cottons has been vastly extended by their extreme cheapness, the quantity of goods produced, and the number of persons employed in the manufacture are now greater than at any former period. Mr. M'Culloch (Dictionary of Commerce, p. 415) estimates the number of persons directly employed in the cotton manufacture at 833,000; the aggregate amount of their wages at twenty millions a year; and the annual value of the goods produced in Great Britain at thirty-six millions!

A. D. 1768. By the 7th George III. c. 17, it is

enacted, that the hours of working of tailors, within the city of London and five miles thereof, shall be from six o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock in the evening, with an interval of one hour only for refreshment; and that their wages shall be any sum not exceeding 2s. 74d. per diem, except during a general mourning, when for a month they shall not exceed 5s. 7 d. per diem. Masters giving, or journeymen accepting, higher than these statutary wages may be sent to the house of correction.

The wages of silk-weavers were fixed by statute so late as the 13 Geo. III. c. 68.

A. D. 1772. Baron Maseres publishes a Proposal for establishing Life Annuities for the Benefit of the Poor.

A. D. 1781. Robert Raikes, a master-printer of Gloucester, establishes the first Sunday-school. The philanthropic aim of this benevolent individual was greatly facilitated by the institution, four years after, of the Sunday-school Society; the objects of which were to promote by correspondence and pecuniary assistance the establishment of Sunday-schools to induce the opulent, and those in easy circumstances, to visit and superintend them, and suggest such improvements as might offer to their consideration. Next to charity-schools Sunday-schools may be considered the second step in the progress of popular instruction. Before their establishment education was at a very low ebb, even among the middle orders; as may be seen by the writing and spelling of respectable tradesmen of that period. The improve

ment in the education of the working classes gave an impulse to the education of the class immediately

above them.

A. D. 1782. The workhouse plan, originally adopted above a century ago, received a great extension from an act passed this year, commonly called Gilbert's Act, from the name of the member of parliament by whom it was framed. This act, aiming to combine the advantages of an assemblage of a number of poor on one spot, of a minute division of labour, and a joint management of expenditure, empowered magistrates to consider any large workhouse as a common receptacle for the poor within a diameter of twenty miles. Judicious as this plan apparently was, it has not been successful: proper care has seldom been taken to separate the inmates of the workhouses according to their age or their habits, nor has the division of employment been carried to the necessary length. Their earnings have consequently been insignificant, and the charge to the parish amounts in general to 97., 107., or even 167. each, while half the sum would suffice, if paid to the poor at their own habitations. It has thus been fortunate that the limited extent of workhouses, prior to 1820, hardly admitted above 100,000 inmates. (Lowe's Present State of England.) This, however, is not decisive of the utility of workhouses: by improving their managment, and by leaving, as has been suggested, to able-bodied claimants only the option of accepting relief in a poor-house, it is probable many would decline burdening the parish

rather than submit to their discipline and coarse fare.

Mr. Gilbert also instituted an inquiry into public charities, and was author of various other expedients for improving the poor-laws and bettering the condition of the poor. One suggestion of this gentleman was, to limit the future amount of the poor assessment to the average expenditure of the three years ending in 1785, namely, to 1,943,6497.

After the failure of Mr. Gilbert's plan Sir William Young took up the subject of the poor. It is no slight recommendation of this gentleman that many of his suggestions were adopted by the legislature, and now form the least exceptionable part of the poorlaws. Judicious, however, as Sir William Young was in most of his measures, it is important to observe, that it is to him we must ascribe the hurtful practice of paying a portion of the wages of labourers out of the poor-rates. In a bill he introduced, it was provided that, to relieve agricultural labourers during winter, magistrates should be empowered by notice affixed to the church door, to settle a rate of wages to be paid to labourers out of employ, from the 30th of November to the 28th of February; and to distribute and send them round in rotation to the parishioners, proportionally as they paid to the rates; the la bourers to be paid by the person employing them, two-thirds of the wages so settled, and one-third by the parish officers out of the rates. This clause was borrowed from a practice already mentioned, which had long prevailed in Buckinghamshire and the mid

land counties. During winter labourers out of employ went round from house to house, and were either employed or paid by each parishioner in proportion to his poor assessment: they were called roundsmen.

A. D. 1786. Mr. Acland publishes a project to enable the poor to provide for themselves by a compulsory subscription of a portion of their earnings to a general fund: a scheme recently revived by the Quarterly Review.

A. D. 1790. Justices of the peace are empowered to visit the workhouses within their jurisdiction, to examine the state of the poor, their food, clothing and bedding, and to summon masters of poor-houses to appear at the quarter sessions to answer complaints against them.

A. D. 1793. The first act, the 33d Geo. III. c. 54, introduced by Mr. Rose, for the regulation of Friendly Societies. It is impossible to trace the origin of these associations; from a curious account of them by Sir F. Eden (State of the Poor, v. i. p. 590) they appear to have been coeval with guilds and corporations. A new act was passed for their regulation in 1829, the provisions of which were framed on the recommendation of the more intelligent members of the societies themselves, aided by the suggestions of enlightened individuals who felt interested in the permanency of such useful institutions. In 1831 there were 4117 friendly societies in England, and the number of members probably a million and a half: in 1815 the number of members was 925,429. Parl. Paper, No. 522, Sess., 1825,