LABOUR, MACHINERY, AND STEAM. 339 



which had been previously occupied in the fabrication of wrought 

 commodities : from both these sources a number of unemployed 

 hands accumulate : the gradual increase of the population produces 

 a surplus of labourers, who cannot find profitable employment in the 

 tillage of land ; and to this surplus is daily added a crowd of work- 

 men, whom the extension and improvement of machinery disengages 

 from manufactories." 



This is a correct statement of the present condition of the labour- 

 market. 



" Many persons," says the same writer, " seem to regard the ex- 

 tended, and still extending, use of machinery in this country, with 

 feelings of apprehension, if not of dismay ; but we entertain no such 

 opinion. So far are we from regarding the increased use of ma- 

 chinery as an evil, that we hail every such application of the dis- 

 coveries of science as another step in the steady course, by which 

 the benevolent Author of nature pushes forward the improvement of 

 the human race." 



This opinion as to the beneficial operation of mechanism upon the 

 prospects of society in general, and upon the comfort of the labourers 

 themselves in particular, has been supported by Mr. M'Culloch, 

 who says, " that mechanical inventions and discoveries are supremely 

 advantageous to the operatives : " and Mr. Babbage, in his able and 

 ingenious book on the " Economy of Manufactures," takes the same 

 view of the subject, though in a more limited and guarded way. 



Now it certainly requires some ingenuity to prove that the blocking 

 up of the labour-market, and thus depriving the labourer of the sole 

 means for disposing of his industry, which is the entire amount of his 

 capital, is to benefit him. The " Quarterly" indeed finds a refuge 

 for the destitute in waste lands ; and Mr. Babbage very coolly re- 

 marks, that " if the competition between machinery and human la- 

 bour is perceived to be perfectly hopeless, the workman will at once 

 set himself to learn a new department of his art." We confess this 

 remark, coming from Mr. Babbage, surprises us, as his account of the 

 hand-loom weavers must surely have satisfied him, that there are 

 insurmountable difficulties in the way of the conversion of a great 

 body of labourers from one industrial condition to another. 



Machinery has, questionless, been a most important addition to 

 our national resources as a means of producing wealth; and, as the 



