UTILITY OF MACHINES. 418 
that those opinions against which no criticism has ever 
been pronounced from the commencement of societies, 
are conformable to reason and to general advantage. 
Well, on the question so much debated, relative to the 
utility of machines, what was the unanimous opinion of 
antiquity ? Its ingenious mythology will inform us; the 
founders of empires, the legislators, the conquerors of 
tyrants who oppressed their country, received the title of 
demi-gods only ; but it was among the gods themselves 
that they placed the inventors of the spade, the sickle, 
and the plough. 
I already hear our adversaries, on account of the 
extreme simplicity of the instruments that I have cited, 
boldly refuse them the name of machines, unwilling to 
regard them as any thing but tools; and ensconce them- 
selves obstinately behind this distinction. 
I might answer that such a distinction is puerile ; that 
it would be impossible to say precisely where the tool 
ends and the machine begins; but it is better worth 
remarking that in the pleadings against machines noth- 
ing has ever been said of their greater or less complica- 
tion. If they are repudiated, it is because with their aid 
one man can do the work that would otherwise require 
several men; now would any one dare to maintain that 
a knife, a gimblet, a file, a saw, do not confer great facil- 
ity of operation on the hand that uses them; that the 
hand thus strengthened would not do the work of a great 
many hands armed only with their nails f 
The workmen, seduced by the detestable theories of 
some of their pretended friends, did not stop at the 
sophisticated distinction between tools and machines ; 
they wandered over certain counties of England, in 
1830, vociferating the cry of down with the machines! 
