Lbs. Exported in yarn during the year, 131,937,935 Exported in thread do., 2,567,705 Exported in manufactured cotton goods, 302,360,687 Estimated quantity of yarn sent to Scotland and Ireland, 10,734,859 Exported in mixed manufactures, consumed in cotton banding, healds, candle and lamp wick, waddings, socks, calender bowls, paper, umbrellas, hats, and loss in manufacturing goods, 31,655,230 Balance left for home consumption and stock, 1st January 87,773,049 ———————————— 467,029,465 =========== I have the most perfect confidence in the correctness of Mr Burn’s calculations, being personally acquainted with that gentleman, and knowing the excellent sources from which he derives his information, and the care which he devotes to the accuracy of all his facts. The result to which the above statement leads is, that the consumption of raw cotton in goods sold in our home markets is 18·36 per cent only, upon the total quantity of yarn spun in England. This, a superficial observer will say, is a very trivial quantity for our boasted home consumption. Let us see, however, in what stage of manufacture, and in what description of goods, the cotton taken off by foreign markets principally consists. In the first place, 131,937,935 lbs., or 28 per cent of the total cotton spun, was exported, as shown in the table above, in the shape of yarn, an article but one remove from the raw material, and the manufacture of which employs machinery principally, and leaves only a small margin of profit to the country. With respect to the description of goods, in the manufacture of which for the foreign market the remainder of the raw material is consumed, little difficulty is felt by persons acquainted practically with the subject. Mr M‘Culloch, in his _Dictionary of Commerce_, page 456 of the edition of 1847—the latest I have before me—remarks upon the facts as striking, that, notwithstanding the superiority of our machinery, and this branch thus being one in which we most greatly excel our foreign rivals, the proportion of fine to coarse yarns spun has materially decreased; and that, in fact, the actual quantity of fine yarns has decreased, whilst the total consumption of cotton has quadrupled during the last twenty-five years. That the quantity has decreased to this extreme extent may well be doubted, although the cheapening which has taken place in silk and other fabrics during this period has, we know, to a great extent caused the disuse, for home consumption, of many once highly prized articles of the cotton manufacture. We may accept,