364 Machinery-distresses, [June, 



prised if, in spite of all their disclaimers, they do not find out the neces- 

 sity still of proposing a grant ; if not before the session closes, at least 

 before the misery ends. 



But, turn we our consideration to the causes of this distress. No two 

 persons agree about them. Every one has his omti theory. It is exces- 

 sive taxation ; it is high prices ; it is overtrading • it is credit ; it is the 

 want of credit, &c. We will not puzzle ourselves or our readers. The 

 labourers themselves have instinctively discovered the only cause worth 

 considering, excess of machinery. All others are of inferior importance, 

 one involving the other, or such as will sooner or later work their cure. 

 The laboui-ers, we say, have themselves discovered the true cause, and, 

 we may add, the real — the effective remedy — however we may depre- 

 cate the employment of it in their hands — the destruction of this ruinous 

 machinery. 



The arguments and appeals that are made to the understandings of 

 the miserable loom-breakers, are of the most idle and irritating descrip- 

 tion. First, the machinery is not at all the cause. They know better ; 

 the conviction is brought home to them in the progressive reduction of 

 their wages, or in the diminution, or the entire loss of employment. 

 Then they are told, the power-loom weavers get higher wages than the 

 hand-loom : why, that is one of the grounds of complaint ; all cannot 

 obtiiin this power-loom work, which the employer can afford to pay better 

 than the other. Then again, they are told, the manufacturer cannot 

 compete with the foreign markets, without the aid of this macliinery. 

 What is that to them ? The less the better, they may say ; for some 

 time past, in proportion as the powers of machinery have been magni- 

 fied, our wages have fallen. The times were better for us, when you had 

 little or nothing to do with foreign competition. Are you to fatten, and 

 consumers to be accommodated, at the expence of the sufferings of our- 

 selves and families ? 



In the nature of things, machinery cannot be usefully carried beyond 

 a certain point ; and we are convinced it has long since, in almost every 

 manufacture, passed that useful point. There is a limit to demand, as 

 there is a limit to the globe. Our economists have done infinite mischief 

 by the absurd application of mathematics to probabilities as well as pos- 

 sibilities. There are no limits to the powers of the golden rule of three — 

 on paper. If double the power give double the result, of course any 

 multiple whatever of that power, will produce a proportionate effect. It 

 is with them, as it has long been at the Exchequer : double the tax, 

 double the revenue. Experience has worked conviction of the blunder 

 there ; but not yet among the manufacturers, and still 'less among the 

 economists. A thorough-going economist is perfectly impenetrable — 

 cased in the hide of a rhinoceros. We saw an absurd paper — we cannot, 

 on these occasions, mince our phrases — on the subject of machinery, in 

 the Westminster Review, very recently, where the author is attempting 

 to prove the indefinite extension of machineiy an advantage, by reducing 

 his opponents to an absurdity. ' If,' says he — at least to the same purpose, 

 we have not the nmnber at hand — ' if the extension be not an improve- 

 ment, then the less machinery we have the better ; and of course, the 

 complete extinction of all machinerj^, till we come to the scratching of 

 the soil with our fingers, must be the very acme of improvement.' Here 

 is a specimen of the precious folly of the economists. They are always 

 in extremes. They can see no limits. Though their business is with 



