towns and villages, and is the most densely populated strip of country in England.
In Lancashire, and especially in Manchester, English manufacture finds at once its starting point and its centre.
The Manchester Exchange is the thermometer for all the fluctuations of trade. The modern art of manufacture has reached its perfection in Manchester.
In the cotton industry of South Lancashire, the application of the forces of Nature, the superseding of hand labour by machinery (especially by the power-loom and the self-acting mule), and the division of labour, are seen at the highest point; and, if we recognise in these three elements that which is characteristic of modern manufacture, we must confess that the cotton industry has remained in advance of all other branches of industry from the beginning down to the present day.
The effects of modern manufacture upon the working-class must necessarily develop here most freely and perfectly, and the