CHAPTER XII. 



LOCAL SYSTEMS. 



273. — Scotch heads are the largest and most intellectual in 

 the world. "Whilst nominally submittina; to the overwhelminof 

 power of a more populous, more wealthy, and more fertile 

 country, they have actually ruled it, giving it King's laws, Prime 

 Ministers, and Cabinets, To the best of these heads we owe the 

 steam engine, our steam ships, and our gas lighted streets. The 

 English and German head is not far behind the Scotch. All are 

 ruling heads, all inventing heads, all eminently persevering heads, 

 full of resources to meet every emergency. 



274. — But so long as these fine heads stay at home, there is 

 some overpowering conservative influence that binds them toa 

 long to time honoured practices, keeps them contented with 

 inferior tools, and even gives them a secondary place in the race of 

 inventors and improvers. When the same men put their foot on 

 a virgin soil, when they mingle together on an unimproved 

 country, when they compare under the same surroundings the 

 merits of the different tools that each has brought from a native 

 country, when they survey the wealth of nature's resources and 

 realize the dearth ot labour to appropriate them, they are at once 

 roused to exert their faculties in the production of improved tools, 

 and seek every means to exchange the drudgery of the no longer 

 cheap field worker, or house builder, for the more available labour 

 of the patient ox, the willing horse, or the untiring steam engine. 

 Thus, the lightest and most convenient tools, the only complete 

 and expeditious saw mills, the effective screw pulverizer, and 

 above all the triumphant reaper and binder, giving cheaper and 

 better bread to the whole world, have originated not with Britons 

 at home, but with Britons abroad ; not with those who have 



