My obligations are very numerous and in some cases extend to much more than appears in this volume. To the late Humphrey Chetham I am indebted for providing in Manchester the library which bears his name, in the reading-room of which I have spent so many delightful hours. Mr. H. Crossley, the present librarian, has rendered me untiring assistance in searching out the authorities that I have used, as have the librarians of the Manchester Reference Library and the Christie Library. Miss F. Collier has assisted me in many ways, but particularly in the tedious task of wading page by page through the _Journals of the House of Commons_ and the files of _The Manchester Mercury_ and making extracts therefrom. Miss P. Heap has sketched the map from the one published in 1795 with Aikin’s _Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester_. The Corporation of the Royal Exchange Assurance, through its Manchester manager, Mr. J. Loudon, has granted me permission to reproduce the photograph of the model of Manchester in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The model has been constructed by Mr. H. Yates of Moss Side, Manchester, and is a remarkable piece of work. It is based upon “A Plan of Manchester and Salford, taken about 1650” (referred to on p. 25) and must have involved an enormous amount of research, as by far the greater part of its detail is based upon contemporary documents and prints. It is to be hoped that before long the model may find a permanent resting-place in some Manchester public institution. Too late for me to avail myself of the information they contain, I find that Mr. Loudon has published a series of articles in _The Royal Exchange Assurance Magazine_, entitled “Manchester Memoirs.” In writing these articles Mr. Loudon has made use of such records of the Corporation as were not destroyed when the Royal Exchange was burned down in January, 1838. Sufficient remain, however, to indicate their value in the elucidation of the social and economic history of the Manchester district in the eighteenth century, and the part that was played by the Corporation in its development. Records are still in existence of policies taken out by prominent Manchester business men at that time, including one by Richard Arkwright, in 1785, when he insured his Manchester factory for £5000. In addition to the persons already mentioned, I am indebted to Mr. Thomas Midgley, Curator of Chadwick Museum, Bolton, for valuable information and for the photograph of Crompton’s statue; to Mr. J. Wadsworth, of the staff of _The Manchester Guardian_, for important references; to Mr. H. L. Beales, of the University of Sheffield, for compiling the index; and to Professor D. H. Macgregor for reading my proofs. To Mr. H. M. M‘Kechnie, the Secretary of the University Press, I am deeply grateful, as he has advised my every step while the book has been passing through the press, and has helped me in many other ways.