484 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



utility has not been thoroughly tested, and especially those of a 

 complicated or expensive character. A machine which promises 

 much may greatly disappoint us in the results. Some of the 

 most complex machines perform only that which the most 

 simple would accomplish with half the trouble, and it is often 

 quite as difficult to manage the machine as to perform the labor. 

 A machine constructed upon the most sound and philosophical 

 principles requires, many times, a philosopher to guide it. Agri 

 cultural machines of a complicated nature are constantly liable 

 to get out of repair, and at times when the inconvenience and 

 loss, occasioned by the stoppage of the work from such acci 

 dents, are excessive. Then the conduct and management of the 

 machine must go into the hands of persons who are ignorant 

 and stupid ; who have a prejudice against the success of ma 

 chinery, because they erroneously suppose that it interferes with 

 their labor ; who generally resist all innovations, and who but 

 too often find a malicious gratification in the failure of all 

 attempts at improvement. The remedies for this very common 

 evil, it is not easy to determine. The first is, if possible, to give 

 the laborer a direct personal interest in the success of the machine 

 in use. The second is less direct, and can only be looked for in 

 the future ; that is, the better education of the laboring classes, 

 which shall enable them to take more just views of their own 

 private interests, and understand their inseparable identity with 

 all measures of general improvement, with the progress of the 

 mechanic arts, by which, if labor is not abridged, production is 

 greatly increased, and with the interests and welfare of every 

 other class in the community. Happy will it be for the world, 

 when the true principles of political economy so well illustrated 

 in the well-known Latin fable of the revolt of the limbs against 

 the stomach, and as clearly in the sacred writings, when the 

 apostle reminds us that &quot; we are members one of another, and if 

 one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and if one 

 member rejoices, all the members rejoice with it&quot; shall be every 

 where understood, and, if we may dare hope for such a result, 

 conscientiously applied and practised upon. 



