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T11E NATURE AND CAUSES OF

ably, yet the great diminution of the quantity will generallymuch more than compensate the greatest rise which can hap-pen in the price.

There are, indeed, a few manufactures, in which the neces-sary rise in the real price of the rude materials will more thancompensate all the advantages which improvement can in-troduce into the execution of the work. In carpenters’ andjoiners’ work, and in the coarser sort of cabinet-work, the ne-cessary rise in the real price of barren timber, in consequenceof the improvement of land, will more than compensate allthe advantages which can be derived from the best machinery,the greatest dexterity, and the most proper division and dis-tribution of work.

But in all cases in which the real price of the rude mate-rials either does not rise at all, or does not rise very much,that of the manufactured commodity sinks very considerably.

This diminution of price has, in the course of the presentand preceding century, been most remarkable in those ma-nufactures of which the materials are the coarser metals.A better movement of a watch, than about the middle of thelast century could have been bought for twenty pounds, maynow perhaps be had for twenty shillings. In the work ofcutlers and locksmiths, in all the toys which are made of thecoarser metals, and in all those goods which are commonlyknown by the name of Birmingham and Sheffield ware, therehas been, during the same period, a very great reduction ofprice, though not altogether so great as in watch-work. Itlias, however, been sufficient to astonish the workmen ofevery other part of Europe , who in many cases acknowledgethat they can produce no work of equal goodness for doubleor even for triple the price. There are, perhaps, no manu-factures in which the division of labour can be carried farther,or in which the machinery employed admits of a greater va-riety of improvements, than those of which the materials arethe coarser metals.

In the clothing manufacture there has, during the sameperiod, been no such sensible reduction of price. The priceof superfine cloth, I have been assured, on the contrary, has,within these live-and-twenty or thirty years, risen somewhatin proportion to its quality; owing, it was said, to a consi-derable rise in the price of the material, which consists alto-gether of Spanish wool. That ol the Yorkshire cloth, whichis made altogether of English wool, is said, indeed, during