The paternal thoughtfulness of the home government employed itself in relieving the colonist from such exhausting drafts upon his energies. It sedulously prohibited his throwing himself away on the manufacture of iron or anything else. In 1750 it placed him under a penalty of £200 for erecting a rolling-mill, tilt-hammer or steel-furnace. Lest the governor of the colony should fail to enforce this statute and protect the pioneer from such a waste of time, it held that functionary to a personal forfeit of £500 for failing, within thirty days after presentment by two witnesses on oath, to abate as a nuisance every such mill, engine, etc. As this mulct would have made a serious inroad on the emoluments of the royal governors, even with the addition of the inaugural douceur customarily given by the provincial assemblies to each new incumbent--in Virginia regularly £500, doubled in the instance of Fauquier in 1758, when it was desired to drive the entering wedge of disestablishment and razee the parsons--we are prepared to believe that the iron business was not flourishing. Under a despotism tempered so very moderately by bribes, a similar blight fell upon all other branches of manufacture. Among these, wool, flax, paper, hats and leather are specified in a Parliamentary report as interfering with "the trade, navigation and manufactures" of the mother-country. An act of Parliament accordingly forbade the exportation of hats to foreign countries, and even from one colony to another. That, after such a course of repression, the country found itself wholly unprepared on the attainment of independence to make any headway in this field, is no matter of surprise. Thirty years elapsed before the manufacturing statistics of the Union became presentable. In 1810 they were reckoned at $198,613,471. This embraces every fruit of handicraft, from a barrel of flour and a bushel of lime to a silk dress. We had 122,647 spindles and 325,392 looms, made 53,908 tons of pig iron, and refined about one pound of sugar for each head of the population. In 1870, after sixty years of tossing between the Scylla and Charybdis of tariffs, "black" and white, the yield of our factories had mounted to the respectable sum of $4,232,325,442. They employed 2,053,996 operatives. Of these, the average wages were $377, against $289 in 1860 and $247 in 1850, yearly. The advance in the product of refined sugar may be cited as illustrative of the progress of the people in comfort and luxury. It reached a value of one hundred and nine millions, representing nearly ten times as many pounds, or twenty-eight pounds a head. This exemplification is but one in an endless list.