The explosive industrial growth of Birmingham started before that of the textile towns of the North of England and can be traced as far back as the 1680s. Birmingham's population quadrupled between 1700 and 1750. By 1775 – before the start of the mechanisation of the Lancashire cotton trade – Birmingham was already the third most-populous town in England, smaller only than the older southern ports of London and Bristol and growing faster than any of its rivals. As early as 1791 Birmingham was being described by the economist Arthur Young as "the first manufacturing town in the world".