The west of England has considerably the advantage over the eastern
side of the island. One way or another nature did much more for it. It
is true, that the eastern side was civilized much earlier; yet human
ingenuity and industry have of late years been much more successfully
employed in turning the gifts of nature to the best possible account.
Ireland and America are customers, for whom, though they were long in
coming, it was worth while to wait. After all, Lancashire is the most
remarkable and characteristic feature in the comparison. From being
among the most backward parts of England, this county has _worked_ its
way into the front rank. The contrast between its condition up to the
middle of the last century, and the astonishing spectacle which it
exhibits at present, belongs to the transformation which a hundred
years create in a newly settled country like America, far more than to
the gradual improvements and changes of an old English county.
It would be curious to analyze the concurrent causes, and marshal
the successive steps, by which Lancashire has advanced;--not only
succeeding in appropriating to itself a leading interest in the
creative inventions of Watt and Arkwright, but connecting its name
in honourable alliance with literature and science. The very
circumstances from which a contrary presumption would originally have
been drawn, have (singularly enough) principally contributed to its
extraordinary progress. Lancashire owes the canals, by which the
commercial thoroughfare of that end of England has been turned from
the Humber to the Mersey, to the enterprise of a _Peer_. It owes the
docks, which have about them almost a Roman presentiment of future
greatness, to the spirit of a _Corporation_. It owes the taste and
accomplishments, by which the character of its wealth has been raised
above the drudgery and fanaticism of money-getting, almost entirely to
the zeal of a few _Dissenters_. The name of Governor Clinton is not so
pre-eminently united with the canal policy of America, as is the name
of the Duke of Bridgewater with the canals of England. He staked his
last shilling on the chance of thus cutting out an inland north-west
passage to the Atlantic. The corporation of Liverpool, by an
enlightened application of their vast resources, have accelerated,
consolidated, and secured the realization, of every expectation and
contingency which fortune threw in their way. They have hastened,
not to say, anticipated, events. There can be as little doubt of the
effect which the light radiating from the assemblage of Priestley,
Wakefield, Aikin, &c. at Warrington; from the presence of Percival,
Henry, Ferriar, and Dalton, at Manchester; and from that of Roscoe
and Currie at Liverpool, spread over their circle. The literary
attainments and cultivation of the manufacturers and merchants of
Lancashire, as a body, seem otherwise likely long to have lagged
behind their general powers of understanding, and their real station
in society.--_Edinburgh Review_.
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