UTILITY OF MACHINES. 



413 



that those opinions against which no criticism has ever 

 been pronounced from the commencement of societies, 

 are conformable to reason and to general advantage. 

 Well, on the question so much debated, relative to the 

 utility of machines, what was the unanimous opinion of 

 antiquity ? Its ingenious mythology will inform us ; the 

 founders of empires, the legislators, the conquerors of 

 tyrants who oppressed their country, received the title of 

 demi-gods only ; but it was among the gods themselves 

 that they placed the inventors of the spade, the sickle, 

 and the plough. 



I already hear our adversaries, on account of the 

 extreme simplicity of the instruments that I have cited, 

 boldly refuse them the name of machines, unwilling to 

 regard them as any thing but tools ; and ensconce them 

 selves obstinately behind this distinction. 



I might answer that such a distinction is puerile ; that 

 it would be impossible to say precisely where the tool 

 ends and the machine begins ; but it is better worth 

 remarking that in the pleadings against machines noth 

 ing has ever been said of their greater or less complica 

 tion. If they are repudiated, it is because with their aid 

 one man can do the work that would otherwise require 

 several men ; now would any one dare to maintain that 

 a knife, a gimblet, a file, a saw, do not confer great facil 

 ity of operation on the hand that uses them ; that the 

 hand thus strengthened would not do the work of a great 

 many hands armed only with their nails ? 



The workmen, seduced by the detestable theories of 

 some of their pretended friends, did not stop at the 

 sophisticated distinction between tools and machines ; 

 they wandered over certain counties of England, in 

 1830, vociferating the cry of down with the machines ! 



