own accord, the manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton. Such
manufactures are the offspring of agriculture. In the modern history of Europe, their extension and improvement
have generally been posterior to those which were the offspring of foreign commerce. England was
noted for the manufacture of fine cloths made of Spanish wool more than a century before any of those
which now flourish in the places above mentioned were fit for foreign sale. The extension and improvement
of these last could not take place but in consequence of the extension and improvement of agriculture
the last and greatest effect of foreign commerce, and of the manufactures immediately introduced by it,
and which I shall now proceed to explain.