MACHINERY. 



627 



heal. The man who employs a machine, produces as 

 much as he who employs living workmen. If there 

 be a difference of expense in favour of the machin- 

 ery, the former will make larger profits than the 

 latter. He will grow rich faster. But he will 

 not put his riches into a strong box. He will sur- 

 round himself with additional comforts. He will 

 employ a school-master. He will patronize the 

 printer. He will travel and become better ac- 

 quainted with his race. And thus, while he makes 

 himself a far more useful and valuable member of 

 society than before, he gives employment, in one 

 way and another, to quite as much human industry, 

 as his machine deprived of employment. Thus, 

 from the same cause that produced partial evil, 

 flows also universal good. The amount of pro- 

 ductive industry of every sort is, in the end, vastly 

 increased. 



We will now say something of the more general 

 effects of machinery : and first, of the vast acces- 

 sion which has been made to the productive ener- 

 gies of labour, and the consequent vast augmenta- 

 tion of the products of industry. The necessaries, 

 the comforts, and the luxuries of life are now pro- 

 duced in unparalleled profusion. The effect of 

 abundant supply is to make articles cheap. Every 

 man can now provide for his wants, and the wants 

 of those dependent on him, in a much easier way, 

 and at a much cheaper rate, than ever before; and 

 the happy consequences of this state of things are 

 visible in the improved condition of all classes of 

 civilized society. But it is not in this point of 

 view, that we chiefly delight to contemplate the 

 effects of machinery. Its influence on the physical 

 CJndition of man is doubtless very great ; but its 

 influence on his intellectual condition is greater. 

 Not only are men in general better fed, better 

 clothed, and better lodged than formerly, but, what 

 seems to us to be a matter of infinitely greater 

 moment, they are far better taught than formerly. 

 Machinery has released some from hand-work, who 

 have applied themselves to head-work. Machinery 

 has supplied them with the means of communicat- 

 ing the results of their industry to the world. 

 Thought is no longer restricted to the narrow circle 

 around the thinker. Machinery has furnished 

 better methods of sending it abroad, than speech. 

 Art has been called in to assist nature. The 

 speaker yields to the writer. The tongue is van- 

 quished by the pen. No power can long preserve, 

 or extensively diffuse spoken words, however elo- 

 quent. Write them out and give them to the 

 printer, and if they are worthy of it they will 

 spread every where and live for ever. Formerly, 

 Cicero thundered in the Roman forum, in the 

 midst of the proud monuments of his country's 

 victories, and surrounded on all sides by the altars 

 of his religion, to an audience, that shuddered, and 

 kindled, and quailed, and burned, as he spoke. 

 But when his oration was ended, it was forgotten 

 by the multitude. Some burning thought might 

 be stamped upon the memory. It might pass into 

 a proverb, and be handed down by tradition. But 

 that would not transmit his fame to future times. 

 Had not Cicero written his orations, we should 

 have known little more of him, than that he was 

 a great orator, and that he lived and died in the 

 latter ages of the Roman republic. He did write 

 them, however; but even then, how limited was 

 the circulation, which the copyist alone could give 

 them 1 



Very different is the case now. A great orator 



rises in parliament. Every word, as it falls from 

 his lips, is caught and written down. Early the 

 next morning, the press gives wings to his thoughts, 

 and sends them abroad, by the aid of the multiplied 

 machinery of conveyance, to traverse regions, and 

 to kindle minds, where Cicero did not even dream 

 that it was possible for man to exist. The epithet, 

 " winged words," seems no longer Homeric, but 

 familiar and common-place. In a fortnight, they 

 reach New York. In less than a fortnight more, 

 they are descending the Ohio and the Mississippi. 

 In the mean time, they have been passing across 

 the Channel, into France, Spain, and Germany, 

 learning new languages as they rush along. They 

 make the circuit of the world. They are heard 

 in India, in Australia, and in the isles of the Pacific 

 ocean. Thus a great thinker and speaker, with- 

 out the press can do little, against it, nothing; but 

 with its aid, he is like the sun, light radiates from 

 him in all directions, and diffuses itself through 

 space. It may be said of him, without hyperbole, 

 that his words go into all the world, carrying with 

 them a momentous influence for evil or for good. 

 By the side of this tremendous energy, every other 

 power becomes insignificant. It proceeds from 

 mind, and acts upon mind, and it is the chief glory 

 of machinery, that it conveys its impulses to the 

 remotest quarters of the globe. And this power 

 is not conferred only on the great orator and states- 

 man, who stands conspicuously out from the mass 

 of his fellow-men. It is shared, in different de- 

 grees, by all who have thoroughly awakened their 

 own immortal energies of mind and spirit. It may 

 emanate from the closet of the poorest student, 

 and be of force to revolutionize an empire. It has 

 been truly, as well as forcibly said, by Dr Chan- 

 ning, that " one great and kindling thought, from 

 a retired and obscure man, may live when thrones 

 are fallen, and the memory of those who filled 

 them obliterated, and, like an undying fire, illumi- 

 nate and quicken all future generations." 



But not only has machinery set free from the 

 necessity of labour, many to teach, but a far 

 greater number to be taught. Let the machines, 

 which now supply the wants of the nations, be de- 

 stroyed, and it requires no prophetic skill to fore- 

 see, that, at the same time, the school-houses will 

 be emptied. Let it be imagined, if any are able to 

 imagine, that every machine, for the furtherance of 

 the operations of labour, is destroyed, and that all 

 memory of the mode of their construction is blot- 

 ted from the mind, and then let us be told, whether 

 we should not, almost at once, sink back into bar- 

 barism. Now, thousands are instructed, where one 

 was formerly. Knowledge is diffused widely 

 through all classes of society, and is yet to be dif- 

 fused far more widely. An unprecedented demand 

 for useful information is every where made. 

 Through the instrumentality of the press, and the 

 modern engines of swift conveyance, sympathies 

 are established between individuals, and between 

 communities of individuals, who entertain similar 

 sentiments, though residing in opposite hemispheres. 

 It is a remarkable illustration of this, that the 

 friends of freedom and knowledge throughout the 

 globe, seem now to constitute but one great party. 

 Wherever a struggle is made for liberty, wherever 

 a contest is begun with that worst of tyrants, igno- 

 rance, that spot concentrates and fixes the atten- 

 tion of multitudes in every civilized nation. Un- 

 numbered minds watch the progress of the contest, 

 with deep anxiety. Thus a universal public 

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