THE SUBJECT CONTINUED. 201 



cation to machinery, there was no such thing as a 

 mechanical power that could be carried about, and 

 applied where and when and how you pleased, except 

 animal power. The plough, the spade, or the hoe 

 (with their varieties) , were the only possible modes of 

 effecting the task of cultivation. The comparatively 

 recent discovery of steam-power altered the condition 

 of human life in this particular. The modes of action 

 to which cultivation was before limited, and which 

 are exemplified in the use of the three instruments 

 just named, became, on the discovery of steam, no 

 longer the necessary and only modes of performing 

 the act of tillage. From the nature of things it was 

 morally certain that whenever that new Power was 

 applied to this act, it would be through an instru- 

 mentality as different from the plough, as the plough 

 was from the spade. If a man will only give himself 

 the trouble to think how total a revolution the appli- 

 cation of steam effected to the navigation of a ship, 

 and the locomotion of a carriage, he cannot very well 

 fail to see what is meant by the saying that a new 

 power requires a new process. It is a solecism in art, 

 as well as science, to attempt to yoke steam on to a 

 plough. There is no affinity between them ; any more 

 than, as I said before, between a horse and a spade. 



