MACHINES ‘FAVOUR POPULATION. 419 
those engravers, whose ruin was so piteously announced 
to us; never were they either more numerous or more 
occupied. 
Iam going to bring forward some irrefragable facts. 
They will render it impossible, I think, to maintain that 
among the inhabitants of this earth, such, at least, as Na- 
ture has created, the use of machines can bring on the 
result of a diminution of the number of workmen em- 
ployed in each sort of industry. Other customs, other 
habits, other passions, might, perhaps, have led to an en- 
tirely different result; but I leave such a text to those 
who may be tempted to write treatises on political econ- 
omy for the use of the inhabitants of the Moon, or of 
Jupiter, or of Saturn. 
Placed in a much more confined theatre, I ask myself 
whether, after having sapped the very foundations of the 
system maintained by the adversaries of machines, it can 
be still requisite to cast a glance at some criticisms of de- 
tail. Need we remark, for example, that the poor’s rate, 
that bleeding wound in the British nation, that wound 
which some people pretend to trace to the abuse of ma- 
chines, dates from the reign of Elizabeth, from a period 
anterior by two centuries to the labours of Arkwright 
and of Watt ? 
You will at least acknowledge, they say to us, that the 
fire-machines, the mule-jennies, that the machines used 
for carding, for printing, &c., objects of your prédilection, 
have not prevented pauperism from increasing and prop- 
agating itself. This fresh avowal will cost me but little. 
Did any one recommend machines as a universal panacea ? 
Was it ever maintained that they would have the un- 
heard-of property of discarding error and passion from 
political assemblies ? that they would direct the counsel- 
