from the amount of the population, and there can be no doubt that previous to the introduction of the woollen manufacture, when the inhabitants were wholly dependant for existence upon agriculture, the entire number of inhabitants in the parish was not more than three or four hundred. The original woollen mills were exceedingly small concerns, probably not employing more than twelve individuals each. There is no reason to suppose the woollen and hatting trades employed more than from two to three hundred individuals in the parish, just prior to the introduction of the cotton-linen trade, about the close of the reign of Elizabeth. The highest rate of wages then paid to the most skilful manufacturing operatives did not exceed, one shilling per day; but of course this sum enabled them to purchase what they deemed sufficient quantities of the real necessaries of life. The average price of wheat, in the sixteenth century, was about £l ls. per quarter.

The cotton-linen manufacture, the parent of the most gigantic system of commerce the world has ever witnessed - a system destined to effect a change so vast in the condition, the habits, and the minds of the population, that it is scarely possible to conceive its influence and extent - was slowly making its way, and yet its progression in Manchester and the neighbourhood was such, in a few years, as to confer opulence on several trading families. The families of Cheetham, Byrom, Beck, Howarth, Mosley, Holbrooke, Hulme, Percival, Hartley, Wrigley, Cooke, Sidebottom, Newell, Dickenson, Marshall, Clarke, Galley, Barlow, Bayley, Neild, Gaskell, Yates, Foxley, Bowker, Potter, Goddard, Johnson, Nugent, Booth, Broster, Alexander, Maise, Partington, Marler, Bootle, Fox, Drinkwater, Oldfield, Moss, Hind, Sedgwick, Scholes, Bent, Holt, Tipping, and others, derived considerable wealth from the cotton and woollen manufactures of Manchester, with which they were all directly or indirectly connected during

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