In 1732 the new colony of Georgia was founded by general Oglethorpe, and became a silk-growing country, exporting, by the end of this period, an interval of only eight years, 10,000 pounds of raw silk annually.
The rapid growth of the commerce of the American colonies excited an intense jealousy in our West Indian islands, which claimed a mooopoly of supply of sugar, rum, molasses, and other articles to all the English possessions. The Americans trading with the French, Dutch, Spaniards, &c., took these articles in return; but the West Indian proprietors prevailed with the British government, in 1733, to impose a duty on the import of any produce of foreign plantations into the American colonies, besides granting a drawback on the re-exportation of West Indian sugar from Great Britain. This was one of the first pieces of legislation of which the American colonies had a just right to complain. At this period our West Indies produced about 85,000 hogsheads of sugar, or 1,200,000 cwt. About three hundred sail were employed in the trade with these islands, and about 4,500 sailors; the value of British manufactures exported thither being about £240,000 annually, but our imports from Jamaica alone averaged at that time £539,492. Besides rum, sugar, and molasses, we received from the West Indies cotton, indigo, ginger, pimento, cocoa, coffee, &c.
During this period a vast empire was beginning to unfold itself in the East Indies, destined to produce a vast trade, and pour a perfect mine of wealth into this country. The victories of Clive, Eyre Coote, &c., were telling sensibly on our commerce. During the early part of this period this effect was slow, and our exports to India and China up to 1741 did not average more than £148,000 per annum in value. Bullion, however, was exported to pay expenses and to purchase tea to an annual amount of upwards of half a million. Towards the end of this period, however, our exports to India and China amounted annually to more than half a million; but the necessity for the export of bullion had sunk to an annual demand for less than £100,000. The amount of tea imported from China during this period rose from about 140,000 pounds annually to nearly 3,000,000 pounds annually.
The progress of our manufactures was equally satisfactory. At the commencement of this period that great innovator and benefactor, the steam-engine, was produced. The idea thrown out by the marquis of Worcester, in his "Century of Inventions," in 1683, had been neglected as mere wild theory till Savary, in 1698, constructed a steam-engine for draining mines. This received successive improvements from Newman and Cawley, and still further ones from Brindley in 1756, and Watt extended these at the end of this period, though this mighty agent has received many improvements since. Navigable canals, also, date their introduction by the duke of Bridgewater, under the management of Brindley, from the latter end of this period, 1758. Other great men, Arkwright, Compton, Hargrave, &c., were now busily at work in developing machinery, and applying steam to it, which has revolutionised the system of manufacture throughout the world. In 1754 the Society of Arts and Manufactures was established, showing a strong desire in the public to encourage the development of them, though the great discoveries in mechanics, as all other things, are almost always the result of the solitary and persevering efforts of genius.
One great article of manufacture and export, however, down to this period, continued to be that of our woollens. To guard this manufacture many acts had been passed at different times, prohibiting the exportation of the raw material. Immediately after the Revolution a fresh act of this kind was passed, and such was the jealousy even of the Irish and of our American colonies weaving woollen cloths, that, in 1689, an act was passed, prohibiting the exportation of wool or woollen goods from Ireland or our plantations to any country except England. Having taken measures thus to confine as much as possible the profit of the woollen manufacture to England, the next year, which saw all protecting duties taken off corn, saw also leave given for the exportation of woollen cloths duty-free from England to any part of the world. Sir William Davenant estimates the value of the yearly growth of wool in England at this time at about £2,000,000, and the value of its woollen manufactures at £8,000,000. He calculates that one-fourth of this amount was exported. At the commencement of this period our writers boasted that we had completely triumphed over the Dutch in the perfection of our manufactured cloths, and, instead of getting our supply of the finest articles from them, made them ourselves. In 1738 Mr. John Kay invented the present mode of casting the shuttle by what is called a "picking -peg," by which means the weaver was enabled to weave cloths of any width, and throw off twice the quantity in the same time. In 1758 the Leeds Cloth Hall was erected, and, about twenty years afterwards, a hall for white cloths.
The silk trade, now grown so great in England, as to be unrivalled for extent and the beauty of the fabrics produced, received a great impulse by the erection of a silk-mill at Derby, in 1719, by John Lombe and his brothers. Lombe had smuggled himself into a silk-mill In Italy, as a destitute workman, and had then copied all the machinery. To prevent the operation of this new silk factory in England, which was worked by a water-wheel on the river Derwent, had 97,746 wheels, movements, and individual parts, and employed three hundred persons, the king of Sardinia prohibited the exportation of the raw material, and thus, for a time, checked the progress of the manufacture. Parliament voted Sir Thomas Lombe £14,000 as a compensation for loss of profits thus occasioned, on condition that the patent, which he had obtained for fourteen years, should expire, and the right to use the machinery should be thrown open to the public. By the middle of this period our silk manufactures were declined superior to those of Italy, and the tradesmen of Naples recommended their silk stockings as English ones. In 1755 great improvements were introduced by Mr. Jedediah Strutt in the stocking-loom of Lee.
As the woollen manufactures of Ireland had received a check from the selfishness of the English manufacturers, it was sought to compensate the protestants of Ulster by encouraging the linen manufacture there, which the English did not value so much as their woollen. A board was established in Dublin in 1711, and one also in Scotland in 1727, to superintend the trade, and bounties and premiums
