1840.] SENATE— No. 36. 157 



on the globe ever had any ingenuity or contrivance, but our- 

 selves. This comes of our ignorance and self-conceit. It is 

 time we cultivated more a just self-respect, and abandoned a 

 habit disreputable and offensive. We may boast indeed of a 

 Franklin, a Whitney, a Fulton and a Perkins ; and so may 

 other nations boast of an Arkwright, a Watts, a Wedgewood, 

 a Babbage, a Fisher,* and a Jacquard. These men belong to 

 no geographical location. Such minds are the common prop- 

 erty of human nature. The curious invention in 1830, of the 

 loom, which bears the name of its inventor, M. Jacquard, of 

 Lyons, constitutes one of the most important steps that has 

 ever been taken in the silk manufacture, and the manufacture 

 of other figured goods. Its ingenious mechanism, is not often 

 rivalled, and scarcely exceeded in any country. But with all 

 our ingenuity and contrivance, how far are we at present from 

 being able to produce the exquisite and beautiful fabrics of 

 civilized Europe, or even of barbarous China and Japan. 



W"e are often admonished of the enormous amounts expended 

 for the introduction of silks into the country. During the preva- 

 lence of that terrible epidemic, which prevailed throughout the 

 country in the year 1836, the speculating brain fever, our im- 

 ports of silk rose to the extraordinary amount of $22,000,000 ; 

 some years they have reached to $12,000,000 and $13,000,000, 

 but ordinarily, they may be set down as from $7,000,000 to 

 $9,000,000. If silks were an absolute necessary of life, we 

 ought, by all means, to be able to produce them, as otherwise, 

 we might under contingencies, suffer through want of them. 

 But as matter of mere luxury, though a useful luxury, there 

 are not the same strong reasons for urging the culture and 

 manufacture of silk against so many disadvantages. Should 

 the government see fit to afford such a protection as the culti- 

 vators of silk might desire for their purposes, this would be a 



* " Bobbinet may be said to surpass every other branch of human industry 

 in the complex ingenuity of its machinery ; one of Fisher's spotting frames 

 being as much beyond the most curious chronometer, in muhiphcity of me- 

 chanical device, as that is beyond a common roasting-jack." — Ure on Manu- 

 factures, p. 730. 



