410 JAMES WATT. 



been found only near Bourges for example. On this 

 hypothesis, compute on your fingers the number of work- 

 men that would have been required to bring to the site 

 of the capital all the stone that during five centuries has 

 been worked up by architects, and you will find a truly 

 prodigious result : and however little the new ideas may 

 smile upon you, yo« may go into ecstasies at your ease 

 on the happiness that such a state of things would have 

 shed on the proletaries. 



Let us venture some doubts, although I know very 

 well that the Vertots of our day perfectly resemble the 

 Rhodian historian, when their seat is made, ('' quand leur 

 siege est fait.") 



The capital of a powerful kingdom, not very distant 

 from France, is traversed by a majestic river, which 

 even men-of-war ascend. under full sail. The surround- 

 ing country is furrowed in all directions by canals which 

 carry heavy burdens at a very small freightage. A regu- 

 lar network of routes, admirably kept up, lead to all the 

 most distant parts of that territory. To these gifts of 

 nature and of art, this capital, which of course every one 

 has already named, unites an advantage of which Paris 

 is deprived ; the quarries of building-stone are not at its 

 gates, they lie at a distance. There then the Utopia of 

 the new economists is realized. Will they not now count 

 up by hundreds of thousands, perhaps by millions, the 

 quarrymen, the boatmen, the carters, the labourers in- 

 cessantly employed, digging out, carrying away, prepar- 

 ing the building-stone for the construction of the immense 

 number of edifices with which that capital is annually 

 enriched ? We will leave them to count at their ease. 

 There has happened in that city what would have hap- 

 pened in Paris if it had been devoid of its rich quarries ; 



