It has often been remarked how supply sometimes waits upon
demand, where it might least of all be expected, as where the two, supply and demand, spring from different causes. We have a case before us. The new policy of Napoleon, releasing French agriculture and engine-making from the restrictions on iron, must create an immense increase of demand in this country. An increase of supply offers itself, as if to take advan- tage of the opportunity, and a new impulse is given to the British iron trade. One of the latest and most promising instances is furnished by the Cardiff and Caerphilly Iron Company (Limited), which has obtained possession of a most productive estate near Cardiff, and is opening three blast furnaces for the manufacture of pig iron. The company has every prospect of producing so much more metal than it will be able to work up in its own furnaces, as to leave a surplus for sale to other masters ; while the estate yields three kinds of coal, especially steam coal, most valuable in close proximity to a sea-port. This is a kind of foreign pro- duction which France will not envy but desiderata ; and the labour and capital employed in working the iron and coal will be as truly working the vintage of France, as if the labourers were picking the grapes. It is but one, though a cogent instance of the new opportunities opening by he extension of European trade.
Previous page
