Читать книгу A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume II (of 2) - Johann Beckmann - Страница 9

That the first express mention of soap occurs in Pliny and Galen, and that the former declares it to be an invention of the Gauls, though he prefers the German to the Gallic soap231, has already been remarked by many. Pliny says that soap232 was made of tallow and ashes; that the best was made of goats’ tallow and the ashes of the beech-tree, and that there were two kinds of it, hard and soft. The author of a work on simple medicines, which is ascribed to Galen, but which however does not seem to have been written by that author, and of which only a Latin translation has been printed, speaks of soap being made by a mixture of oxen, goats’, or sheep’s tallow, and a lye of ashes strengthened with quicklime. He says the German soap was the purest, the fattest, and the best, and that the next in quality was the Gallic233. This account corresponds more exactly with the process used in Germany at present; whereas the French use mineral alkali, and instead of tallow, employ oil, which appears to be a later invention. Pliny in his description does not speak of quicklime; but as he mentions a mixture of goats’ tallow and quicklime a little before, it is probable that the use of the latter was then known at Rome. Gallic and German soap are often mentioned by later writers234, as well as by the Arabians, sometimes on account of their external use as a medicine, and sometimes on account of their use in washing clothes. The latter purpose is that for which soap is principally employed in modern times; but it does not seem to have been the cause of German soap being introduced at Rome. Washing there was the occupation of indigent scourers, who did not give themselves much trouble concerning foreign commodities. The German soap, with which, as Pliny tells us, the Germans coloured their hair red, was imported to Rome for the use of the fashionable Roman ladies and their gallants. There is no doubt that the pilæ Mattiacæ, which Martial recommends as a preventive of gray hair235; the caustica spuma with which the Germans dyed their hair236; and the Batavian froth or lather which the Romans employed for colouring theirs237, were German soap. It is probable that the Germans tinged it with those plants which were sent to Rome for dyeing the hair238; and according to the modern manner of speaking, it was more properly a kind of pomade than soap.

It appears that the Romans at first considered hair-soap as an ointment made from ashes; for we read in various passages of ancient authors, that the hair was dyed by means of ashes, or an ointment made of ashes and a certain kind of oil. It is however possible that they may have had such an ointment, which undoubtedly would be of a saponaceous nature, before they were acquainted with the German soap, or that they imitated the German pomade with different variations239.

As soap is everywhere used for washing at present, a question arises what substitutes were employed before it was invented. Those with which I am acquainted I shall mention and endeavour to illustrate. They are all still used, though not in general; and they are all of a soapy nature, or at least have the same effects as soap; so that we may say the ancients used soap without knowing it.

Our soap is produced by a mixture of lixivious salts and tallow, by which means the latter becomes soluble in water. The greater part of the dirt on our linen and clothes consists of oily perspiration or grease, or dust which that grease attracts, and which either cannot be washed out, or, but very imperfectly, by water alone. But if warm water, to which lixivious salts have in any manner been added, be taken, and if dirty cloth be rubbed in it, the greasy dirt unites with the salts, becomes saponaceous, and is so far soluble in water that it may be washed out. There are also natural juices which are of a soapy quality, in the state in which we find them, and which can be employed in the stead of artificial soap. Of this kind is the gall of animals and the sap of many plants. The former being less strong in its effects on account of its slimy nature, is used at present particularly for coloured stuffs, the dye of which is apt to fade. As far as I know, however, it was not employed by the ancients240, but it is certain that in washing they used saponaceous plants.

In the remotest periods it appears that clothes were cleaned by being rubbed or stamped upon in water, without the addition of any substance whatever. We are told by Homer, that Nausicaa and her attendants washed their clothes by treading upon them with their feet in pits, into which they had collected water241. The epithet black, which the poet gives to the water, might induce one to conjecture that it had been mixed with ashes, which would convert it into a lye; but where were the ashes to be found? Had they brought them along with them, the bard, where he before enumerates everything that they carried with them, and even oil, would not have failed to mention them; and such a conjecture is rendered entirely groundless by his applying the same epithet to pure water, in other places, where nothing can be supposed to have coloured it242. Water, when it stands in deep pits, reflects so few rays of light, that in a poetical sense it may very properly be called black.

We find however mention made at later periods of ashes, and a lye of ashes employed for washing; but I think very seldom, and I do not know how old the use of them may be. According to Julius Pollux, konia, mentioned by Aristophanes and Plato, was a substance used for washing; and he says expressly, that we are to understand by it a lye of ashes. This I mention for the sake of those, who, like me, place little confidence in the terms of art given in dictionaries. With the above lye, oil- and wine-jars were cleaned243; and it was employed also for washing the images of the gods244. The method of strengthening the lye by means of unslaked lime was known, at any rate, in the time of Paulus Ægineta; but it appears that the Romans were not acquainted with the salt itself, which is procured by dissolving common wood-ashes in water: I mean, they did not understand the art of producing it in a dry solid form, or of boiling potashes.

On the other hand, that fixed lixivious salt, the mineral which nature presents in many of the southern countries, was long known and used in washing. This was the nitrum, or, as the people of Attica pronounced it, the litrum, of the ancients, as has already been remarked by others245. It would however be worth the trouble to investigate the proofs still further. By examining them with more mineralogical and chemical knowledge than have hitherto been employed for that purpose, they might be further strengthened, and serve to illustrate many obscure passages. For my part, I have neither leisure nor room here to undertake such a task, though I have collected many observations relative to that subject. It is certain at any rate, that the ancients employed nitrum for washing, and it is evident from the testimony of various authors, that it was much used in the baths246.

That the people of Egypt, in the time of Pliny, made mineral alkali also from the ashes of some plants, we have reason to conclude, because he says that it was necessary to put the Egyptian nitre into vessels well-corked, else it became liquid. Natural alkali is never liable to do so, unless it be very much burnt; and as no reason is assigned for its assuming that form, we may believe that the Egyptian alkali was the strongly burnt ashes of those plants which are still used in Egypt for making salt, and perhaps the same with which the Spaniards were made acquainted by the Arabians, and which they cultivate for making soda.

Strabo speaks of an alkaline water in Armenia, which was used by the scourers for washing clothes247. Of this kind also must have been the lake Ascanius, which is mentioned by Aristotle248, Antigonus Carystius249, and Pliny250. It is worthy of remark, that the ancients made ointments of this mineral alkali and oil, but not hard soap, though by these means they approached nearer to the invention than the old Germans in their use of wood-ashes; for dry solid soap can be made with more ease from the mineral than the vegetable alkali; and when Hungarian, French, and German soap are of equal goodness, the last does more credit to the manufacturers because they cannot employ the mineral alkali. I shall here observe, that this alkali was used for washing by the Hebrews, and that it occurs in the sacred writings under the name of borith251.

The cheapest however, and the most common article used for washing, was the urine of men and animals. When this excrement becomes old, the alkali disengages itself, which may be perceived by its fœtid smell; and such alkalised urine being warmed, and employed to wash greasy clothes, produces the same effects as the nitrum of the ancients. It is still used for the like purpose in our cloth manufactories.

To procure a supply of it, the ancient washers and scourers placed at the corners of the streets, vessels which they carried away after they had been filled by the passengers, who were at liberty to use them; and the practice of having such conveniences was certainly more decent than that of employing the walls of churches and other buildings, which the police of Dresden forbade some years ago, but with no effect. At Rome, that which at present spoils and renders filthy our noblest edifices, was converted to use. When clothes were washed, they were trod upon with the feet, as was the case in the cloth manufactories at Leeds, Halifax, and other places of England, where the urine was collected by servants, and sold by measure to the manufacturers under the name of old lant. On account of the disagreeable smell attending their employment, scourers at Rome were obliged to reside either in the suburbs or in some of the unfrequented streets252.

My readers here will undoubtedly call to remembrance the source of taxation devised by the emperor Vespasian, who, as his historians tell us, urinæ vectigal commentus est253. It is not certainly known in what manner this impost was regulated. Did the emperor declare that article, which was not subterraneum rarius, to be a regale as a res derelicta, so that the scourers were obliged to pay him what he thought a reasonable sum proportioned to the benefit which they derived from it? Or was it imposed only as a poll-tax? For every tax upon anything indispensably necessary to all, is, to speak in the language of finance, the same as what is called a poll-tax, or a tax paid by every one who has a head. The latter conjecture is the most probable, especially as this tax continued two centuries, till the time of Anastasius, and as we read also of vectigal pro urina jumentorum et canum, which was exacted from every person who kept cattle. Vespasian therefore was not fortunate in the choice of a name for his tribute, which on that account must have been undoubtedly more detested. A poll-tax at present is called by those who do not speak favourably of it, the Turkish-tax, because the Turks impose it on all unbelievers. When it was introduced by Louis XIV. in 1695, he called it la capitation.

Of plants with a saponaceous juice, the ancients, at any rate, used one instead of soap; but it is difficult or rather impossible to define it. I shall not therefore content myself merely with transcribing the passages where it is mentioned, but I shall arrange whatever I can find respecting it in such a manner, as, according to my opinion, the names of plants ought to be explained in dictionaries.

Στρουθίον, Struthium, Latinis Herba lanaria, et Plinio etiam Radicula.

1. Est planta spinosa, Theophrastus, Plinius.

2. Grata aspectu, sed sine odore, Theophrastus, Plinius.

3. Folio oleæ, Plinius; vel papaveris Heraclei, Theophrastus.

4. Caule ferulaceo, tenui, lanuginoso, eduli, Plinius.

5. Radice magna, acri, medicinali, Plinius, Dioscorides; spumescente, Lucian.

6. Floret æstate, Theophrastus. Plinius; sed semen nullum, Plinius.

7. Nascitur saxosis et asperis locis, Plinius.

8. Sponte, præcipue in Asia Syriaque; trans Euphratem laudatissima; sativa ubique, Plinius.

9. Radix conditur ad lanas lavandas, Theophrastus, Plinius, Dioscorides, Columella, et alii.

10. Herba ovibus lac auget, Plinius.

The above is all that the ancients have told us respecting this plant. The information is indeed very scanty, and at the same time it is not altogether certain; but even if it were, it would be sufficient only to confute some conjectures, but not to establish the systematic name of the plant. I call the properties of it described to us uncertain: first, because I do not know whether Pliny did not mean to distinguish the wild plant from that which was cultivated, and many have understood as alluding to the former that which I have applied to both: secondly, because the words of Theophrastus, being in one passage evidently corrupted, will admit of various constructions; and because in another, on account of some exceptions, of which he speaks, they appear at least to me unintelligible: thirdly, because Pliny, who gives us the best account of it, is the only author who calls the struthium or soap-plant radicula, a name by which is rather to be understood a dye-plant of the same kind as madder. We have reason therefore to suspect that he has confounded the properties of the two plants, especially as the fourth property was ascribed by others to a Rubia, Asperula, or Galium, which was cultivated in Syria, and named often radicula Syriaca. On the other hand, this diminutive is very ill-suited to a root which Pliny himself calls large.

The words of that author, “tingenti, quicquid sit cum quo decoquatur,” have been by some explained as if he meant that the struthium was a dye-plant, though as a soapy plant it must have been destitute of colour; and they have hence deduced a proof that Pliny confounded the struthium with the radicula used in dyeing. On the other hand, Hardouin reads unguentis instead of tingenti. He assures us that he found the former in manuscripts, and is of opinion that the sap of the struthium was used also for ointments.

In my opinion, however, tingenti must be retained; and the meaning is that when cloth was to be dyed it was necessary to prepare it for that purpose by soaking it and washing it with the sap of this plant. This he expressly tells us himself; “tingentibus et radicula lanas præparat.” It is probable that the ancient dyers mixed their dye-liquors with the juice of the struthium, for the same purpose as bran and the seeds of fenugreek are added to dye-liquors at present; that is, to render them thicker and more slimy, in order that the colouring particles may be longer and more equally suspended in or diffused through them254. The words quidquid sit cum quo decoquatur will now become intelligible. Whatever may be employed for dyeing, says the author, the addition of the juice of the struthium is serviceable.

As what has been said contains nothing that can enable us to determine the genus of the struthium according to the rules of botany, we may be allowed to conjecture that it was one of those plants still used for the like purpose in Italy and other neighbouring countries. Fuchs thinks it must have been the Saponaria officinalis (soap-wort), the roots of which indeed contain a saponaceous juice that readily changes the saliva into froth. The root was employed for that purpose by the impostor in Lucian; and the juice is used at present for cleaning wool and cloth. In the Helvetian Alps, the sheep, before they are shorn, are washed with a decoction of the plant and its roots; and with a mixture of ashes it serves for cleaning linen. The taste of it is so sharp, that it is compared by some to that of the small burnet-saxifrage.

This Saponaria officinalis however differs too much from the remaining properties255 of the struthium. Its root is as thick only as a quill, or at most as one’s finger. The stem, which is three feet in height, throws out many branches, and cannot be called caulis ferulaceus, tenuis. It is not rough and prickly, and, instead of growing in poor rocky soil, it is rather fond of deep ground and the borders of corn-fields.

We may therefore conjecture with more probability that the Gypsophila Struthium, Linn.256, a plant still used for washing in the lower part of Italy and Spain, is the struthium of the ancients. This opinion acquires some strength by its being adopted among the Italians and Spaniards; and because the plant, as Pliny says, grows in a rocky soil and on the mountains. It is also still called lanaria by the Calabrian peasants. It has a tender stem; its leaves are so like those of the olive-tree that they might be compared to them by those who are not botanists; and its root is large, but it is neither rough nor prickly. This contradiction may be accounted for by supposing that Pliny, through a mistake, of which I have already accused him, ascribed falsely to the soap-plant the prickly or rough leaves of the dye-plant which had an affinity to madder. But even after this explanation there still remains to be got over a dubious passage of Theophrastus, who indeed seems to make the plant prickly also.

I do not therefore place entire confidence in this opinion; but suspect rather that we shall receive from the East an account of a plant, still used there, which will correspond more exactly with the soap-plant described by Pliny. I am inclined to think that I have already found some precursory information respecting it in Bauhin, who says that in Syria there is another kind of soap-plant, which has prickly leaves like the thistle, and a thick root of a sharp acrid taste. The root, he adds, was employed for washing clothes and wool; and the confectioners of Damascus formed of it, with honey and wine, a kind of sweetmeat which appeared as white as if it had been made of the finest flour and sugar, and which was so hard that it could scarcely be broken with the teeth. This plant seems to belong to those, the cultivation of which was abandoned in Europe, after the use of them was rendered superfluous by newer discoveries.

That the ancients employed their struthium for washing wool is confirmed by various authorities; but I do not remember to have found any evidence of its being used for cleaning clothes which had been worn. Salmasius however quotes a passage from the works, unfortunately never printed, of the old chemist Zosimus, in which he gives directions for restoring, by means of the soap-plant, the lustre of pearls which have become yellow257.

The meal of many kinds of seeds may be used for washing, as well as various kinds of bran. That of almonds, which on account of its oil is remarkably soft, is employed at present for washing the hands by those who are desirous of having a white delicate skin. Cloth, the colours of which easily fade, and which will neither endure soap nor hard rubbing, may be washed extremely well with bran. Our fullers, therefore, and stocking manufacturers use oat-, barley- and bean-meal, especially when they wish the cloth to be slowly milled. Whether the ancients employed bran in the same manner I have not had an opportunity of examining. I am rather inclined to think that they did; and there is a passage of Galen which seems to allude to the use of bean-meal258. In all probability the beans of the ancients were the smallest and roundest variety of our horse-beans, or those used as fodder.

In the last place, the ancients, at those periods of which I speak, used fullers-earth much oftener than it is used at present. Till the countries where it was procured be described by travellers who unite a knowledge of antiquities with skill in mineralogy, the species of this earth, mentioned in the works of ancient authors, cannot be distinguished with accuracy. But from the purposes to which they were applied, we can with certainty conclude that they must have been partly of the nature of marl and partly of the nature of soapstone.

According to the then usual method of washing, by which the clothes were stamped with the feet, the cretæ fulloniæ, as Pliny259 calls them, acted in the same manner as our fullers-earth employed at present, partly by scouring and partly by absorbing the greasy dirt. The ancients, after their manner, gave them names only from the countries where they were produced; and hence we find mention made of terra Cimolia260, Chia261, Lemnia262, Sarda263, Umbria264, Samia, Tymphæa265, and others. Many of them, like that brought from Sardinia, could not be used in cleaning coloured stuffs; and for this reason, perhaps, because some colours would not stand hard scouring, or endure their caustic nature.

The fullers, however, did not use these earths merely for washing, but also for whitening many kinds of cloth. This was done by rubbing fine white earth into the cloth, in the same manner as soldiers do to give some parts of their dress a brighter appearance. A like process is employed by glovers and those who wash or clean leather. The earth used by the latter is a yellowish-white iron-ochre, called from the purpose to which it is applied collar-earth266. When a perfect white was required, a kind of white potters-clay or marl was employed; and the closer it adhered to the cloth, and the less easily it could be rubbed out, it was so much the better. The poor at Rome rubbed it over their clothes on festivals, in order that they might appear brighter267.

It deserves here to be particularly remarked, that some of these earths, such as that of Chios, were employed in the baths instead of nitrum; and this is the case in the Levant still. De la Valle extols in this respect a kind of reddish earth, and says that people of the first distinction never bathe without it. Perfumes are often mixed with it; and it is formed into small balls, which when used are suffered to dissolve in the water. Different kinds of vessels, and particularly those in which wine and oil had been kept, were cleansed with these earths also268. Glass flasks which have had oil in them, cannot be cleansed better or more speedily than by shaking in them a mixture of fullers-earth or potters-clay. When these are not to be had, blotting-paper may be used. The oil is absorbed by the earth or the paper, and with them can be easily washed out.

To render cloth perfectly white, it was also fumigated with sulphur by the fullers, who were not ignorant that many colours were destroyed by its vapours269. We are told by Apuleius that the wife of a scourer concealed her gallant under a vessel of basket-work, over which cloth used to be laid to whiten by the effects of sulphur kindled under it. Our washer-women employ a cask in this mode of bleaching, and our clothiers a small close apartment, in which the wet cloth is suspended upon hooks.

Pliny has described the method of washing used at Rome, but many things respecting it appear to me obscure270. The cloth was first washed with Sardian earth; it was then fumigated with sulphur, and afterwards rinsed with real Cimolian earth. The word desquamatur was undoubtedly a term of art, which cannot be further explained, because we are unacquainted with the operation to which it alludes. Pliny seems to have been particular in mentioning real Cimolian earth, because the false kind became black by the steam of the sulphur which the cloth absorbed. Was it adulterated with some metallic oxide or with white lead? It was dear enough to induce people to mix it with such articles; and in that case it must necessarily have become black.

The expression funditur sulphure seems to be attended with no less difficulty. In comparing the different readings, I find that the oldest editions have offunditur, which has been changed into effunditur, and lastly into funditur. It is probable however that instead of offunditur we ought to read offenditur, which would make the whole clear. I am much surprised that this reading was not adopted by Hardouin. As Pliny says in other parts of his work “offendit stomachum,” and “offendit aciem oculorum,” he might undoubtedly have applied that word to the earth and its colour.

Fast colours, which the acid of sulphur might render pale, but could not entirely destroy, would by washing with Cimolian earth be improved or rather restored, as the earth would absorb and carry off the acid. There was also another kind of earth (saxum) which was useful in the preparation of cloth fumigated with sulphur, but which injured the dye, probably because it was too calcareous, and which was perhaps our common chalk.

I do not intend to treat here of the whole art of Roman fullers, which belongs rather to the history of weaving or manufacturing cloth in general; but I hope I shall be forgiven if I add the few following observations. The fullers received the cloth as it came from the loom, in order that it might be scoured, walked and smoothed. It was walked by being stamped upon with the feet. The rough wool raised by this operation was combed off, partly with the skin of a hedgehog, and partly with the tops of some plants of the thistle kind, in order to give the cloth a nap. Shearing seems not then to have been known: I have at least met with no passage where it is mentioned: and the case is the same with the use of presses; which, in my opinion, were not invented till the sixteenth century. The whole process of smoothing seems to have consisted in making the wool or nap lie as evenly as possible one way, which certainly must have given to the cloth a much better appearance.

As cloth at present is more dressed and shorn on one side than another, the ancient fullers prepared theirs in the like manner; so that clothes could be turned, after the inside of them had been new dressed. Whether they made felt, also, I have not yet inquired; but I conjecture that the manufacturing it was the occupation of those called lanarii, coactores, and coactilarii.

The occupation of the fullers was at Rome very extensive, and afforded employment to a great number of people, but it at length entirely decayed. Schöttgen is of opinion that it belongs to those arts which have been lost. But other writers have declared arts which are exercised now in greater perfection than formerly to be lost, merely because they were not acquainted with them; or because, on account of the alterations they have undergone, they did not know where to find them. All the different operations of fulling have become so complex by new methods, improvements, and inventions, that they can no longer be conducted by one man; and the whole business has for that reason been separated or divided into several distinct branches.

The scouring of cloth when it comes from the loom, was, together with walking, separated from the rest, after the invention of the walk-mill. How old that invention may be, I cannot accurately determine; but we find it mentioned in the beginning of the thirteenth, and even at the end of the tenth century. Such a mill formerly was call fullencium, or molendinum cum fullone271. The dressing and smoothing of cloth, since the invention of shearing and pressing, requires so much art, that these operations can be performed only by skilful workmen, who are called cloth-shearers or cloth-dressers. The scouring of cloth dirtied in manufacturing, is by the invention of soap, bleaching, and other processes, become so easy that it can be performed by women. The Romans for the most part wore a white dress made in the form of a cloak; which indeed, as shirts were not then used, must have often stood in need of being cleaned272. We, on the other hand, wear in general short close clothes of coloured cloth; which by the fashion in which they are made, are less exposed to be dirtied; and we are more accustomed also to use clothes of linen or cotton, which can be washed with much less labour. Felt, which is employed almost for hats alone, is manufactured by our hat-makers. Whoever takes a general view of all these employments together, will be readily convinced that they maintain more people, and in a better manner, than the whole ars fullonia did at Rome.

[The principal kinds of soap manufactured in this country are, – white soap, composed chiefly of tallow and soda, but for some purposes of olive oil and soda; yellow soap, made of tallow, rosin and soda, a little palm oil being occasionally added; mottled soap, formed of tallow, kitchen stuff and soda, its peculiar appearance being communicated by dispersing the lees through it towards the end of the operation; brown soap, made from palm oil, rosin and soda. Soft soap is made with potash and drying oils, either alone or mixed with tallow, and other coarse fatty matters. The fatty matter is mixed with the alkaline ley, and the whole boiled gently for some time, until the fat is completely saponified, which may be known by its becoming clear and transparent, and its susceptibility of being drawn into long threads. A quantity of common salt is then added to the boiling mixture, until the soap loses its thready character, and drops from the spatula in short thick lumps. The soap is then removed, either after cooling, or at once ladled out. Common fatty matters, as tallow, fat-oils, &c., are compounds of a fatty acid with a base, thus resembling salts; the base is a peculiar sweet principle, glycerine; by ebullition with the caustic lye, the neutral fatty compound is decomposed, the fatty acid combining with the base soda, and forming the soap, whilst the glycerine with the excess of alkali remains in the liquid.

The so-called silicated soap, of which large quantities are now manufactured, is made by combining silicate of soda with hard soap in the hot and pasty state; in this way from 10 to 30 per cent. of the silicate may be introduced. Such soap possesses, according to Dr. Ure, very powerful detergent qualities, but it is apt to feel hard and somewhat gritty in use. The silicated soda is obtained by boiling ground flints in a strong caustic lye. Many substances are used to adulterate soap, such as potatoe-starch, clay, &c., for which improvements, as they are termed, numerous patents have been granted in this country.

In Great Britain the hard kind of soap is chiefly made at Liverpool and London, but in considerable quantities also at Runcorn, Bristol, Brentford, Hull, Bromsgrove, Plymouth and Sethwick, and at Glasgow and Leith in Scotland; the soft soap is made principally at Liverpool, Glasgow and Bradford; and silicated soap is likewise extensively manufactured at Liverpool.

From the excise returns, it appears that 140,712,535 pounds of hard, 9,788,851 pounds of soft, and 3,921,862 pounds of silicated soap were made in England in 1841; and 10,708,464 pounds of hard, and 4,535,030 pounds of soft soap in Scotland; making in all 169,666,742 pounds, which is an increase of about 30 per cent. since 1832273.

The excise duty on soap was first imposed in Great Britain in 1711, when it was fixed at 1d. per pound. It was raised in 1713 to 1½d. per pound; and again, in 1782, when hard and soft soap were first distinguished, the former being rated at 2¼d., and the latter at 1¾d. per pound. In 1816, that on hard soap was increased to 3d. per pound. But since May 31, 1833, the duty has been 1½d. per pound on hard soap, and 1d. per pound on soft. In 1839, the number of soap manufacturers in England was 177; in Scotland 19; and in Ireland 183. Each requires an annual license, costing 4l.

An allowance of duty is made on soap used in the woollen, silk, flax, and cotton manufactures, which in 1841 was granted on 10,190,160 pounds of hard, and 9,090,184 pounds of soft soap; the allowances amounting to 78,112l. In the same year the net amount yielded by the soap-duty to the public revenue was 815,864l. Ireland is not subject to the soap-duty.

The soap-maker was formerly subjected to an arbitrary and vexatious interference from the excise; but of late years the regulations have been greatly improved, and there is now no superintendence of the process of manufacture, which may be conducted in any way and of any material.]