to the Frosperity of the Working Classes. 307 



opponents of machinery, it be at all necessary to glance at some 

 minor points, which have been mixed up with the consider- 

 ation of the subject ? The Poor Law of England is the most 

 important of these : but, from this bleeding Avound, the na- 

 tion has suffered since the days of Queen EHzabeth; and 

 surely it is absurd to ascribe to the abuse of machinery, an 

 evil which took its origin, and luxuriated for ages, before the 

 labours of Arkwright and Watt were ever heard of. But you 

 must concede, it will be answered, that the steam-engine, and 

 the mule-jenny, and the carding-machine, and the printing- 

 press, &c., these objects of general predilection, have at all 

 events aggravated and extended the evils of pauperism ? Far 

 from it. For what are the facts I First of all, machinery 

 has never been represented as a universal panacea. It has 

 never been alleged that it possessed the unheard of power of 

 dispelling error and passion from political assemblies ; that it 

 could direct the counsellors of princes in the paths of modera- 

 tion, wisdom, and humanity ; that it could have prevented 

 Pitt from unceasingly intermeddling with the affairs of other 

 countries — from every year resuscitating, in all quarters of 

 Europe, the enemies of France, — from subsidising them with 

 immense sums, and thus overwhelming England with a debt 

 of hundreds of millions. This is the cause why the poor-law 

 tax has so rapidly and so prodigiously increased. Machinery 

 has not, and could not produce the evil. On the other hand, 

 it has done much to moderate it, — an assertion which may 

 be proved in few words. Lancashire is the most manufac- 

 turing county of England. In it are situated the towns of 

 Manchester, Preston, Bolton, Warrington, and Liverpool. 

 Here, we say, machinery has been most rapidly and most 

 generally introduced ; and with what effect ? If we compare 

 the total annual amount of the poor-law tax in Lancashire, 

 with the amount of that raised throughout the country, and 

 ascertain the share of each individual, we find that in this 

 county it amounts to only one-third of the mean paid in the 

 other counties ? These cyphers, then, give no quarter to the 

 allegations of system-makers. 



Nor should the high-sounding words so often used by cer- 

 tain declaimers about the poor-laws, induce us to suppose that 



