16
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF TIIE LATE
of iron ore, the easting of pig iron, and the forging of bar iron. In theprocess of smelting, he states that the more volatile particles of the ore,such as zinc, arsenic, sulphur, and carbonic acid, are driven off, and thatthe carbon acquired from the coke supplies their place. The annual pro-duce of the iron mines of Russia he computes at about 73,000 tons,* equalin value to £1,400,000 sterling, and employing 63,000 persons. The ironproduced in Sweden , he states to be 37,500 tons, value £680,000 sterling,employing 30,000 persons. In 1787, Great Britain imported 25,176 tonsfrom Russia , and 16,000 tons from Sweden , value of both, £782,000 ster-ling. In Sweden and Russia , a small duty is exacted on the exportation ofiron in foreign vessels, amounting in Russia to about £37,000 sterling a-year.He next describes the vast advantages possessed by Scotland for this branchof manufacture, in the inexhaustible fields of coal, iron ore, and lime, situ-ated in juxtaposition, and remarks that unlikg other branches of trade, theiron trade has always thriven best during war. He states that in 1787,there were only fifteen blast furnaces in Scotland , and the make about16,000 tons a-year, a mere bagatelle, compared with the materials existingin the country. This Essay concludes with urging the expediency of fore-going, in the first instance, the attempt to introduce into Scotland the sub-sidiary manufactures of Birmingham and Sheffield, but to direct, by prefer-ence, the energies of the country to the manufacture of the raw material,or pig iron, and afterwards, when capital shall be accumulated from thissource, and practice and ingenuity acquired, the branches practised at Bir mingham and Sheffield may with advantage be attempted.”!
It seems scarcely necessary here to remark, that the fore-going Essays have not been quoted as examples of literary com-position, or as productions laying claim to much originality ofconception, or consistency of argument; but as evincive of theline of thought and study, on the part of the writer, under cir-cumstances hut little favourable to pursuits of the kind ; andas exhibiting the earlier bent of a mind which afterwards becamedistinguished for the possession of an unusual share of energy,originality, and vigour. At the time at which the most of theseEssays were written, Mr. Macintosh was as yet under twenty-one years of age, engaged in commercial pursuits, and pos-sessed of but a desultory education. It cannot fail to beobserved, that the arguments advanced, appear sometimes to berather inconsistent, and perhaps inconclusive; but when it isremembered that these Essays were intended as prelections for a
* In 1787.
f Mr. Macintosh lived to see the annual make of iron in Scotland increase from16,000 tons, when he wrote in 1787, to 300,000 tons ! through the operation of“Neilson’s Hot Blast,” of which invention he may be termed the “ foster father.”—Ed.