1831.] Machinery. 169 



their resources, or indemnify themselves from other quarters. It is 

 the great, and the great only the commanding and employing portion 

 of society, who are essentially benefited by the diminished cost of pro- 

 duction. And this is the great cause of the gross and growing inequa- 

 lities in the extreme class of society ; it is the main and predominating 

 cause that is daily widening the space between the great and the little ; 

 the great source of their irrectncileable interests and of alienated feel- 

 ings ; of haughtiness on the one hand and exasperation on the other, 

 and which, if not timely prevented by some relaxation of power, must 

 terminate in struggle and violence. 



How does the economist account for the productions of his machinery 

 becoming comparatively every day more and more, drugs ? How is it, 

 in his opinion, that, cheap as they are, they cannot find purchasers ? 

 Oh ! he cries, it is merely a temporary suspension of activity in the 

 market. There have always been these little interruptions ; they are 

 of short duration, and experience shews a re-action will soon take place, 

 and make up, and more, for all. Doubtless, there have been periods of 

 glut and consequent distress, and they have ceased ; but have they not 

 been followed, along with renewals of what has been called prosperity, 

 almost uniformly by diminished wages to the labourer ? Nor is there 

 any reason, notwithstanding the most confident assertions as to the prin- 

 ciples and progress of civilization, that it should be otherwise. People's 

 means do not, for the most part, grow with the occasion, but are governed 

 by the interests of employers. Nor need they so grow, breaks in the 

 economist, because machinery reduces the " cost of production." Well, 

 but people's means do not even continue stationary, and that at least is 

 indispensable for enabling them to share in the beneficial results of ma- 

 chinery verily, they obviously fall in proportion, and that must surely 

 prove a check to consumption. In short, the commanding portion alone 

 of society can in the long-run benefit, and be the purchasers, and they 

 are too few in numbers, with all their capacities, to promise any long 

 continuance to the reign of machinery. Indeed, when goods begin to 

 sell below the cost price, that reign is all but at an end. But there is the 

 whole world for extending the market. There is not the whole world. 

 Europe and America are manufacturing for themselves ; they will soon 

 supply their own wants ; they will soon be in many instances they 

 already are rivals in the same market. Then how, in the teeth of these 

 facts, can the economists, as the unqualified eulogists of machinery, 

 maintain, that if machinery were to go on for five hundred years, at the 

 rate it has done for the last century, it could be productive of no possible 

 harm ? 



There is a point, we doubt not, up to which machinery is productive 

 of general and permanent good ; but that point, with our institutions, 

 has been passed over some considerable time. To make machinery a 

 blessing to the country, all must partake of the good results. How can 

 men, with hearts in their bosoms, seethe few in luxury, and the many in 

 beggary, and talk, at the same moment, of prosperity, and the happy 

 and glorious effects of machinery ? What blessing can it be, if stockings 

 are two-thirds cheaper than they were, if the makers of them do not get 

 one-third of their former wages ? What advantage is it to them, that 

 cottons and woollens are cheaper, if the price of bread swallows all their 

 wages, and meat is utterly inaccessible? For years now, none of our 

 manufactures cried up as they have been have paid wages sufficient to 



