252 



have one great advantage, in common, that of employing numbers of 



women and children. 



As to the effefts of labour and fkill, creating a value, and adding 



it to the primum, or in other words, as to the relative advantages, 

 which refult to the individual, and the community, from the exercife 

 of thefe different manufaclures, it is computed, that the people em- 

 ployed in the linen manufacture, earn in a given time, one third more 

 than thofe in the woollen. If we confider what may be added to the 

 flock of the community, by a given quantity of land, — one ftone of wool is 

 the produce of an acre of grafs land, which feeds two and a half, or 

 three fliecp ; this wool, in its raw ftate, is equal to a third of its 

 value, when manufactured. This, at twelve fliillings the (tone, makes 

 the grofs produce, by working up the primum, from an acre ot 

 land one pound fixteen. Flax, at eight hundred weight to the acre, 

 made into the worft linen, produces a grofs return nearly eight times 

 greater. The cotton manufafture is perhaps capable of carrying the 

 adventitious, or derivative value, which refults from workmanlhip, or 

 operations on the raw material, to a higher pitch, in its department, 

 than either of the others ; but much of this excellence is to be at- 

 tributed to machinery ; little, in comparifon, to the individual excel- 

 lence of the artifan.* The marked diftinftion of excellence in exe- 

 cution, and the certainty of reward to fuperior merit, in the artifan, 

 is favourable to the progrefs of induftry, and advancement of the arts, 

 as far as they arife from the exertions of individuals- 'J his we may 

 call the progrefs of manufadlures a pqfteriori. The power and levelling 

 principle of machinery, is more favourable to the progrefs of induftry, 

 and the advancement of arts, as far as they depend, on the employ- 

 ment of capital ; this we may call the progrefs of induftry a priori. 



With refped to the replacing of the capital, advanced by the country, 

 for the fupport of thefe manufa£lures, together with a profit ; in other 



words, 



• Yet much of the value of ftatnped or painted cottons depends on the workman. 



