Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. 107 



* 



increased thirteen per cent., the increase in the five large manufac- 

 turing towns of Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Nottingham, and 

 Birmingham, in the whole period of thirty years, has been one hundred 

 and twenty three per cent." How far the disproportion between the 

 agricultural and manufacturing classes can be carried, with safety, 

 either to individuals or to the state, is a problem, which must soon 

 be solved by the future progress of their history in Great Britain. 



It is remarked by M. Say, that "the complete inviolability of prop- 

 erty, whether by public or private attack, and the habitual exercise of 

 attention and judgment to which her people are trained from the 

 earliest years, are the predominating causes of the manufacturing 

 prosperity of England" 



To return to the work which is named at the head of this article ; 

 Mr. Babbage says, " the fact, that England can undersell other na- 

 tions seems to be well established : and it appears to depend on the 

 superior goodness and cheapness of those raw materials of machin- 



■ 



ery, the metals — on the excellence of the tools — and on the admi- 

 rable arrangements of the domestic economy of ttie manufactories." 

 The object of the author is "to point out the effects and the ad- 

 vantages, which arise from the use of tools and machines; to classify 

 their modes of action ; and to trace both the causes and consequences 

 of applying machinery to supersede the skill and power of the hu- 



man arm." 



The work is divided into two sections — the first treats of tools and 

 machinery, illustrating, by examples, the principles which direct their 

 use ; the second, considers some questions of political economy re- 



* 



Iating to the subject of manufactures. 



It is believed, that a brief analysis of so meritorious a work, will 

 be eminently useful to the American artisan, and hardly less accept 

 able to the man of science. 



In tracing the advantages derived from machinery, Mr. Babbage 

 says, that they seem- to arise, principally, from three sources. 



" 1st. Addition to human power. 



"2nd. The economy they produce of human time. 



" 3rd. The conversion of substances apparently worthless into valuable products. 



<« 



1st. Of addition to human power. 



"Beside the forces derived from wind, water and steam, there are other sources 

 of increase, by which the animal force of the individual is itself made to act with 

 far greater than its unassisted powers. 



"At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of a new tool, 

 human labor becomes abridged ; the man who contrived rollers, invented a tool, by 

 which his power was quintupled. The workman, who first suggested the employ- 



