From Manchester to Leeds is a journey of forty-five miles, and about two
hours. We should like to describe Yorkshire, one of the few counties to
which men are proud to belong. We never hear any one say, with conscious
pride, "I am a Hampshireman or an Essex man, or even a Lancashireman," while
there are some counties of which the natives are positively ashamed.
But we have neither time nor space to say anything about those things of
which a Yorkshireman has reason to be proud--of the hills, the woods, the
dales, the romantic streams,--above all, of the lovely Wharfe, of the fat
plains, the great woods, the miles of black coal mines, where we have heard
the little boys driving their horses and singing hymns, sounding like angels
in the infernal regions, the rare good sheep, the Teeswater cattle, that gave
us short-horns, of horses, well known wherever the best are valued, be it
racer, hunter, or proud-prancing carriage horse; hounds that it takes a
Yorkshire horse to live with; and huntsmen, whom to hear tally-away and see
ride out of cover makes the heart of man leap as at the sound of a trumpet;
foxes stanch and wily, worthy of the hounds; and then of those famous
dalesmen farmers, tall, broad-shouldered, with bullet heads, and keen grey
eyes, rosy bloom, high cheek bones, foxy whiskers, full white-teethed,
laughing mouths, hard riders, hard drinkers, keen bargainers, capital
fellows; and besides those the slips, grafts, and thinnings from the farms,
who in factories, counting-houses, and shops, show something of the powerful
Yorkshire stamp. Everything is great in Yorkshire, even their rogues are on
a large scale; in Spain, men of the same calibre would be prime ministers and
grandees of the first class; in France, under a monarchy, a portfolio, and
the use of the telegraph, with no end of ribands, would have been the least
reward. Here the honours stop short between two dukes, as supporters arm in
arm; but still we are obliged to own that no one but a Yorkshireman could
have so bent all the wild beasts of Belgravia and Mayfair, from the Countess
Gazelle to the Ducal Elephant, to his purpose, as an ex-king did. Our task
will be confined on the present occasion to a sketch of Huddersfield and
Leeds, centres of the woollen manufacture, which forms the third great staple
of English manufactures, and of Sheffield, famed for keen blades.
* * * * *
HUDDERSFIELD, twenty-six miles from Manchester, is the first important town,
on a road studded with stations, from which busy weavers and spinners are
continually passing and repassing. It is situated in a naturally barren
district, where previously to 1811 the inhabitants chiefly lived on oaten
cake, and has been raised to a high degree of prosperity by the extension of
the manufactures, a position on the high road between Manchester and Leeds,
intersected by a canal, uniting the east and west, or inland navigation, and
more recently by railroads, which connect it with all the manufacturing towns
of the north. An ample supply of water-power, with coal and building stone,
have contributed to this prosperity, of which advantage has been taken to
improve the streets, thoroughfares, and public buildings. The use of a light
yellow building stone for the houses has a very pleasant appearance after the
bricks of Manchester and Liverpool.
The Huddersfield Canal, which connects the Humber and Mersey, is a very
extraordinary piece of work. It is carried through and over a backbone of
hills by stairs of more than thirty locks in nine miles, and a tunnel three
miles in length. At one place it is 222 yards below the surface, and at
another 656.5 feet above the level of the sea.
When we examine such works, so profitable to the community, so unprofitable
to the projectors, how can we doubt the capability of our country to hold its
own in any commercial race? Men make a country, not accidents of soil or
climate, mines or forests. For centuries California and Central America have
been in the hands of an Iberian race, fallow. A few months of Anglo-Saxon
rule, and land and sea are boiling with fervid elements of cultivation,
commerce, and civilization. With time the dregs will disappear, and churches
and schools, cornfields and fulling-mills, will supersede grizzly bears and
wandering Indians.
All the land in Huddersfield belongs to the Ramsden family, by whom the Cloth
Hall was erected. Six hundred manufacturers attend this hall every Tuesday.
The principal manufactures are of broad and narrow cloths, serges,
kerseymeres, cords, and fancy goods of shawls and waistcoatings, composed of
mixed cotton, silk, and wool.
The neighbourhood of Huddersfield was the centre of the Luddite outbreak,
when a large number of persons engaged in the cloth manufacture, conceiving
that they were injured by the use of certain inventions for dressing cloth,
banded together, traversed the country at night, searching for and carrying
off fire-arms, and attacking and destroying the manufactories of persons
supposed to use the obnoxious machines.
Great alarm was excited, some expected nothing less than a general
insurrection; at length the rioters were attacked, dispersed, a large number
arrested, tried, and seventeen hanged. Since that period not one but scores
of mechanical improvements have been introduced into the woollen manufacture
without occasioning disturbance, and with benefit in increased employment to
the working classes.
The case of the Luddites was one of the few on which Lord Byron spoke in the
Upper House, and Horace Smith sang for Fitzgerald . . .
"What makes the price of beer and Luddites rise?
What fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies?"
The population is about 30,000, and returns one member to the House of
Commons.
About half a mile from the town is Lockwood Spa, of strongly sulphurous
waters, for which a set of handsome buildings have been provided.