MACHINES FAVOUR POPULATION. 419 



those engravers, whose ruin was so piteously announced 

 to us ; never were they either more numerous or more 

 occupied. 



I am 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 Ai-kwrigiit 

 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 predilection, 

 have not prevented pauperism from increasing and prop- 

 agating itself. This fi-esh 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- 



