1831.] [ 167 ] 



MACHINERY. 



THE economists seem at their last gasp glaring, staring facts are 

 driving them to their wits' end, and in the extremity of despair, they 

 have issued, under the high and mighty sanction of the Diffusion-Society, 

 a manifesto, declaratory of the blessings, the irresistible, the illimitable, 

 the universal blessings of machinery. Seizing upon a few favourable 

 circumstances upon advantages which, undoubtedly, flow readily 

 enough towards those who can command them in spite of every hour's 

 experience, they insist that the diffusion reaches every class of society, 

 and every soul partakes of them ; that because a few are benefited, all 

 must be ; because the man with money gets more for it, the man who 

 has none does as much because articles are cheaper, they must be to 

 every body more accessible ; because machinery once made more work, 

 it must still make more and more. Rags, hungry faces, and empty 

 pockets are not worth remarking amidst the splendour, and sleekness, 

 and abundance of aristocratic prosperity. 



The great wants to the labouring man are of course good wages 

 which implies plenty of work, if plenty of work does not imply good 

 wages and low prices. The society tells them machinery universally 

 lessens the cost of production and augments the demand for labour. 

 These are the very things the labourer desires ; but he finds the promise 

 is not made good it " palters with him in a double sense" his expe- 

 rience contradicts the assurance. As machinery has advanced, his 

 wages, at least of late years, have regularly fallen; the cost of produc- 

 tion may have lowered, but his wages have lowered more ; if labour in 

 some instances has been more abundant, it has universally been worse 

 paid ; generally, where he works more, he earns less, and his command 

 over the conveniences and even the necessaries of life is incomparably 

 less than before. 



If the blessings were really such as the economist holds out to the 

 labourer, is it not singular that he, the labourer, should not himself 

 find it out? Is it not incredible that the philosopher in his studio 

 should be the first to discover what fails to strike conviction upon the 

 man himself, in matters too which must come most home to him ? If 

 the labourer suffers, no words will blunt the edge of his feelings, or 

 reverse his convictions it must be idle to tell him, in the teeth of his 

 own knowledge, his situation, upon the whole, as to the conveniences of 

 life, is vastly amended ; and if it were indeed so amended, nobody, 

 he must feel, would think it worth his while to urge upon him so 

 plain a fact. This anxiety, therefore, on the part of the fe school- 

 masters/' is good evidence on the face of it, not merely of their own 

 misgivings, but of absolute consciousness of mistake, while their per- 

 severence in wrong is only a proof of a common resolution to go to 

 the stake, and die in the profession of the pure economical faith. 



The attempt then to control the convictions of the labourer in what 

 he must be the best judge of, is idle or superfluous. He will be influenced 

 by facts, and not by theories. It will not be any mitigation of his suf- 

 ferings to learn that the rich revel at his cost, nor will he require 

 sympathy or relief if he can live in tolerable comfort by the labour of 

 his own hands. 



But our business just now is more with the rich, or rather with the 

 economists, who have been their teachers, and well represent the senti- 



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