of the same kind. Such manufactures,
therefore, are the offspring of foreign
commerce; and such seem to have been the
ancient manufactures of silks, velvets, and brocades,
which flourished in Lucca during the
thirteenth century. They were banished from
thence by the tyranny of one of Machiavel's
heroes, Castruccio Castracani. In 1810, nine
hundred families were driven out of Lucca,
of whom thirty-one retired to Venice, and offered
to introduce there the silk manufacture.[36]
Their offer was accepted, many privileges
were conferred upon them, and they began
the manufacture with three hundred workmen.
Such, too, seem to have been the manufactures
of fine cloths that anciently flourished
in Flanders, and which were introduced
into England in the beginning of the reign of
Elizabeth, and such are the present silk manufactures
of Lyons and Spitalfields. Manufactures
introduced in this manner are generally
employed upon foreign materials, being
imitations of foreign manufactures. When
the Venetian manufacture was first established,
the materials were all brought from Sicily
and the Levant. The more ancient manufacture
of Lucca was likewise carried on with foreign
materials. The cultivation of mulberry
trees, and the breeding of silk-worms, seem
not to have been common in the northern parts
of Italy before the sixteenth century. Those
arts were not introduced into France till the
reign of Charles IX. The manufactures of
Flanders were carried on chiefly with Spanish
and English wool. Spanish wool was the material,
not of the first woollen manufacture of
England, but of the first that was fit for distant
sale. More than one half the materials
of the Lyons manufacture is at this day foreign
silk; when it was first established, the
whole, or very nearly the whole, was so. No
part of the materials of the Spitalfields manufacture
is ever likely to be the produce of
England. The seat of such manufactures, as
they are generally introduced by the scheme
and project of a few individuals, is sometimes
established in a maritime city, and sometimes
in an inland town, according as their interest,
judgment, or caprice, happen to determine.
At other times, manufactures for distant
sale grow up naturally, and as it were of their
own accord, by the gradual refinement of
those household and coarser manufactures
which must at all times be carried on even in
the poorest and rudest countries. Such manufactures
are generally employed upon the
materials which the country produces, and
they seem frequently to have been first refined
and improved in such inland countries as were
not, indeed, at a very great, but at a considerable
distance from the sea-coast, and sometimes
even from all water carriage. An inland
country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated,
produces a great surplus of provisions
beyond what is necessary for maintaining the
cultivators; and on account of the expense of
land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation,
it may frequently be difficult to send
this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore,
renders provisions cheap, and encourages a
great number of workmen to settle in the
neighbourhood, who find that their industry
can there procure them more of the necessaries
and conveniences of life than in other
places. They work up the materials of manufacture
which the land produces, and exchange
their finished work, or, what is the
same thing, the price of it, for more materials
and provisions. They give a new value to the
surplus part of the rude produce, by saving
the expense of carrying it to the water-side, or
to some distant market; and they furnish the
cultivators with something in exchange for it,
that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon
easier terms than they could have obtained
it before. The cultivators get a better price
for their surplus produce, and can purchase
cheaper other conveniences which they have
occasion for. They are thus both encouraged
and enabled to increase this surplus produce
by a further improvement and better cultivation
of the land; and as the fertility of the
land had given birth to the manufacture, so
the progress of the manufacture re-acts upon
the land, and increases still further its fertility.
The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood,
and afterwards, as their work improves
and refines, more distant markets. For
though neither the rude produce, nor even the
coarse manufacture, could, without the greatest
difficulty, support the expense of a considerable
land-carriage, the refined and improved
manufacture easily may. In a small bulk
it frequently contains the price of a great
quantity of rude produce. A piece of fine
cloth, for example which weighs only eighty
pounds, contains in it the price, not only of
eighty pounds weight of wool, but sometimes
of several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance
of the different working people, and
of their immediate employers. The corn which
could with difficulty have been carried abroad
in its own shape, is in this manner virtually
exported in that of the complete manufacture,
and may easily be sent to the remotest corners
of the world. In this manner have grown up
naturally, and, as it were, of their own accord,
the manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield,
Birmingham, and Wolverhampton. Such manufactures
are the offspring of agriculture.
In the modern history of Europe, their extension
and improvement have generally been
posterior to those which were the offspring of
foreign commerce. England was noted for
the manufacture of fine cloths made of Spanish
wool, more than a century before any of those
which now flourish in the places above mentioned