38 Science alters the distribution of labour. 



formerly supplied them, and our fear is that this 

 is largely a result of our neglect of science. 



In many cases instead of superseding labour, 

 science has changed its kind, or its mode of dis- 

 tribution ; in the case of steam-ships, instead of 

 navigation being conducted entirely by nautical 

 ability, it is partly effected by the skill of the 

 engineer ; conveyance of goods by road and canal 

 has not been entirely supplanted, but partly sup- 

 plemented by conveyance by railways. The diminu- 

 tion of labour which sometimes occurs in consequence 

 of the progress of science is extremely small com- 

 pared with its increase. The number of waggoners 

 and horses now employed, merely to collect and 

 deliver all the goods for railways, is actually much 

 greater than the whole of those employed for con- 

 veying all the goods of the country before railways 

 were constructed. 



It would be altogether a false argument to say 

 that the practical benefits derived from the labour of 

 scientific discoverers by the different classes of the 

 community are uncertain or imaginary, because the 

 discoveries and the practical benefits are not in all 

 cases immediately connected. We know that the 

 consumers of tea in this country derive benefit from 

 the grower of that herb in China through the hands 

 of a series of intervening agents, as certainly as if 

 they received the tea direct from his hands. Cause 

 and effect are inseparable, and the remote effect of a 



