THE PLAIN "ENGLISH" OF IT. 207 



real work of cultivation, it reminds one of 4 the 

 house that JACK built.' One can hardly blame the 

 iron ribs of any respectable boiler for bursting at 

 the first pull, in a task so utterly at variance with 

 every known law of mechanical advancement, so 

 repugnant to the economies, I had almost said the 

 very ethics of the steam-engine. 



"I trust to be some day forgiven for so boldly 

 speaking; but I am sorry to think of one useful 

 shilling being thrown away in the attempt, unprofit- 

 able even if successful, of harnessing steam with 

 horse harness, to do horse's work in a horse's way ; 

 the implement itself, whose wretched work it is put 

 to accomplish, being a tool with sentence of death 

 written upon it (be it as ancient as it may,) for 

 its tyranny to the subsoil, which bears the whole 

 burthen and injury of its laborious path. 



"I say the Plow has sentence of death written 

 upon it, because it is essentially imperfect. What 

 it does is little toward the work of cultivation ; but 

 that little is tainted by a radical imperfection 

 damage to the subsoil, which is pressed and hard- 

 ened by the share, in an exact ratio with the weight 

 of soil lifted,^Zws that of the force required to effect 

 the cleavage, and the weight of the instrument itself. 

 Were there no other reason for saying it than this, 



