COTTON MANUFACTURES. Amongst the goods which appear io have been broug,ffit to Europe from the Indian seas, in the days when Arab traders were the only medium of intercourse between the eastern and western worlds, we find mentioned cloths of silk and cotton of various colours and devices. It does not appear, however, that there existed in Europe any great demand for cotton,—the consumption of the Roman people, who were then the customers for all luxuries, being chiefly confined to cloths of silk and wool. Dining tho trade of Europeans with India by the long sea route, the ealieces and line muslins of that country came into general notice; and until the production of machine-made fabrics in Britain, they continued to rise in public estimation. It AVM deemed a great thing with the Lancashire manufacturers, when, by the aid of mechanical and artistic skill, combined with the potent agency of steam, they found themselves able to produce an article which was considered equal to that which the unlettered Hindu had numipulated in his little mud hut on the remote banks of the Ganges, and which had been produced of like excellence by their ancestors, when the 'father of history ' penned his observations upon their countries. That the IIindus paid considerable attention to the details of this manufacture in the most remote ages, there remains sufficient proof on record. In the Indian work of highest antiquity-, the Rig Veda, believed to have been written fifteen centuries previous to the Christian era, occurs the following passage: 'Cares consume me, Satakralu! although thy worshipper, as a rat gnaws a weaver's threads,'—the temptation to the rat being evidently the starch employed by the spinner to impart tenacity to the thread ; nor can there be any doubt that cotton was the thread alluded to. Again, in the Institutes of Menu, WO find it directed 88 follows: Let the weaver who has received ten pains of cotton thread, give them back increased to eleven by the rice-water (stttreli) and the like used in weaving; ho who does otherwise shall pay a fine of twelve panas.' In recent times the cotton fabrics of India formed a considerable item in the exports from the East, during the early days of British Indian commerce ; the delicacy of their fabric, the elegance of their design, and the brilliancy of their colours, ren dered them as attractive to the .better classes of entkumers in Great Britain, as are, in the present day, the shawls of Kashmir or the silks of Lyons.
So much superior, indeed, were the productions of the Indian spinning-wheel and handloom, to those turned out by the manufacturers of Lanca shire in the middle of the 18th century, that not only were Indian calicoes and Indian prints pre ferred to the British-made articles, but the Man chester and Blackburn weavers actually imported Indian yarns in large quantities for employment in their factorie.s. It WM about the year 1771-72 that the I3lackburn weavers, taking advantage of the discoveries and improvements of Ark wright, lIargreaves, and others, found themselves in a position to produce plain cotton goods, which, if they did not quite equal the fabrics of the East, at any rate found their way very rapidly into general consumption in Europe. The invention of the mule jenny in 1779 was the commence ment of a new era in the history of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain ; and when, six years later, Arkwright's machines were thrown open to the public, a revolution was effected in the production of all kinds of yarns. Great Britain found herself able not only to supply all her own wants with cotton goods of every variety of quality, but also to carry the produce of her looms 10,000 miles across the sea, and, placing them at the doors of the Indian consumer, under sell some kinds of the goods made by his own hands from cotton grown in his own garden. Nor is it only in the heavier goods that the Ilrest are able to beat out of their own markets the weaver of the East. There have been masters in their craft who produced fabrics more exquisitely delicate and light in texture than those beautiful inuslins of Dacca, so long and justly celebrated with a. world-wide fame. Although in some particulars these latter fabrics claim a certain degree of superiority, many of the Hindus prefer much of their own woven goods to those of Manchester and Glasgow ; and the cotton manufactures of British India have been steadily advancing in the out-turn of twist and yarn and piece-goods. It is generally believed that Man chester will fail to contend with the Indian mills in respect to the precise class of goods they are in the habit of turning out. The cotton mills of Bombay have made, since the date of their first starting in 1854, very rapid progress.