412 JAMES WATT. 



into this last form will certainly have few defenders ; 

 but what signifies the form when the substance is evi- 

 dently the same ? 



If from labours that require an immense development 

 of power, we were to pass on to the examination of vari- 

 ous industrial products, which, from the delicacy of their 

 materials and the regularity of their forms, have been 

 placed among the wonders of art, the insufficiency, the 

 inferiority, of our organs compared with ingenious me- 

 chanical combinations, would equally strike all minds. 

 Where is there, for instance, so clever a spinner as to 

 draw a thread from one pound of cotton wool fifty-three 

 leagues long, as is done by the machine called the mule- 

 jenny ? 



I am not ignorant of what certain moralists have 

 preached on the inutility of muslins and laces and gossa- 

 mer net, in the weaving of which this fine thread is 

 used ; but it suffices for me to remark, that the most 

 perfect mule-jenny spins under the constant inspection 

 of a great many workpeople ; that the only requisite they 

 care for is, to manufacture goods that will sell ; in short, 

 that if luxury is an evil, a vice, or even a crime, it is the 

 buyers who are to blame, and not the poor proletaries, 

 whose existence, I believe, would be very uncertain if 

 they themselves endeavoured to manufacture for the 

 ladies woollen stuffs instead of fashionable tulle. 



Now let us quit remarks on details, and dive down to 

 the very bottom of the question. 



Marcus Aurelius said : " We must not receive the 

 opinions of our fathers as children would, for the mere 

 reason that they were our fathers' opinions." This 

 maxim, though assuredly a very just one, ought not to 

 prevent us from thinking, or at least from presuming, 



