410 JAMES WATT. 
been found only near Bourges for example. On this 
hypothesis, compute on your fingers the number of work- 
men that would have been required to bring to the site 
of the capital all the stone that during five centuries has 
been worked up by architects, and you will find a truly 
prodigious result : and however little the new ideas may 
smile upon you, you may go into ecstasies at your ease 
on the happiness that such a state of things would have 
shed on the proletaries. 
Let us venture some doubts, although I know very 
well that the Vertots of our day perfectly resemble the 
Rhodian historian, when their seat is made, (“ quand leur 
siége est fatt.”) 
The capital of a powerful kingdom, not very distant 
from France, is traversed by a majestic river, which 
even men-of-war ascend under full sail. The surround- 
ing country is. furrowed in all directions by canals which 3 
carry heavy burdens at a very small freightage. A regu- | 
lar network of routes, admirably kept up, lead to all the t. 
most distant parts of that territory. To these gifts of | 
nature and of art, this capital, which of course every one 
has already named, unites an advantage of which Paris 
is deprived ; the quarries of building-stone are not at its 
gates, they lie at a distance. ‘There then the Utopia of 
the new economists is realized. Will they not now count 
up by hundreds of thousands, perhaps by millions, the 
quarrymen, the boatmen, the carters, the labourers in- 
cessantly employed, digging out, carrying away, prepar- 
ing the building-stone for the construction of the immense 
number of edifices with which that capital is annually 
enriched? We will leave them to count at their ease. 
There has happened in that eity what would have hap- 
pened in Paris if it had been devoid of its rich quarries ; 
