the same breath which brought them. The crowded town is no indication of virtue, unless it is attended with personal habits, attractive from their moral character. Then indeed industry will give the impulse of prosperity, with all those consequences which can make a people happy.

"These are thy blessings, Industry! rough Power!

Whom labour still attends, and sweat, and pain;

Yet the kind source of every gentle art,

And all the soft civility of life."

Part the Sixth.

STATISTICAL REMARKS.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Population-Markets-General Trade.

HAT the state of the town was, at the time of the restoration, has been already mentioned. From that period a gradual increase has taken place both in its population and trade, the reciprocal causes of each other. A general advance, no doubt, has been made in both, in every part of this empire, during the last century, and in part of the present; but such places as Stockton might have been left far behind in the general prosperity, if a certain impulse of industry, and a readiness to accept those advantages which seemed to present themselves, had not been manifested in the conduct of individuals. At one period indeed, as I have observed, improvement seemed to stand still, but the general object now is to press forward.

A public enrollment in 1799, on an expected invasion by the French, Portrack, Preston, and Hartburn, not

The market in Stockton is holden every Wednesday and Saturday throughout the year. The former is the principal market-day, when the town is plentifully supplied with provisions of every kind. So great an alteration has taken place in this respect, within a few years, that it requires a particular notice. In the old history of the place we have seen a great fluctuation of depression and prosperity. From situation it was cut off from much communication with neighbouring places, and its shiping interest being then bad, there was no inducement, beyond its local population, to attempt the extension of its trade. When we consider that its connexion with Yorkshire was only by a ferry-boat, that before the middle of the last century turnpike-roads, as they now are, were hardly known, that then no good roads reached Stockton in any direction, that it lay out of the direct line of the great northern road, and that even within the memory of many there was no direct communication with Sunderland, but circuitous through Durham, we cannot

* Between the years 1821 and 1827, one hundred and sixty houses were built in Stockton, which at the moderate computation of four to a family gives an increase of 640 persons.