342 PROSPECTS OF INDUSTRY 



The consequences of mechanism have been the damming up the 

 outlets for the labour of our rapidly increasing population : the 

 powers of productions are increased by it ad infinitum, without the 

 agency of human labour ; and these inanimate powers are constantly 

 improving. The agricultural population has sunk into depression 

 from the breaking up of the cottier and small farm system ; and 

 mechanical contrivances are forcing away the labourer in addition to 

 the extensive farming, which requires fewer hands : tjie extent to 

 which these causes have already operated is startling. In eight 

 agricultural counties, a diminution of not less than twenty thousand 

 cottages was found to have taken place from 1690 to 1801 ; and 

 the thousands which are annually leaving our shores, with an 

 enormous poor-rate, and the notable scheme of the New Poor Law 

 Act, to cover our once smiling and happy country with " pauper 

 palaces," are sufficient corroborative evidences. 



But mechanism will not stop at the point it has gained ; we are 

 at present the " manufacturers of the world," and for years to come 

 must be so, as our wealth, the enterprise of our merchants, the 

 possession of coal, and the skill of our artisans, place us greatly in 

 advance of all other nations. This monopoly cannot, however, 

 continue for ever : other people will devote their energies to the 

 the same purposes ; and, though all are greatly behindhand as to 

 roads, canals, skill, and capital this will not continue. Switzerland, 

 the Low Countries, France, and the United States, are already in 

 the field, and to some extent interfere with our markets. When- 

 ever therefore the pressure of foreign or domestic competition be- 

 comes more severe, prices must come down, and human labour must 

 go to the wall. Contrivances are in progress, by which many 

 delicate processes, now requiring the human hand, will be performed 

 by machines ; and these, if they do not quite displace the workman, 

 will render one man capable of producing, or rather of superintending 

 the production of quantity now requiring ten or twenty labourers.* 

 The time, indeed, seems fast approaching, when the people, empha- 

 tically so called, will be worse than useless when the manufac- 

 tories will be filled with machinery so admirably constructed and 

 impelled by steam, that nearly all the processes required in them will 



* Vide Gaskell's " Manufacturing Population of England," &c. 



