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 ; 
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, 
