multiply also. The productions which are created by one producer furnish the means of purchasing the productions created by another producer; and, in consequence of this double production, the necessities of both the one and the other are better supplied. The multiplication of produce multiplies the consumers of produce. There are, probably, upon the average, no more hats made in the year than there are heads to wear them; but as there are twenty-onė millions of heads of the British subjects of Queen Victoria, and there were only five millions of the British subjects of Queen Anne, it is self-evident that the hat-makers have four times as much work as they had a century and a half ago. What has given the hat-makers four times as much work? The quadrupling of the population. And what has quadrupled the population? The quadrupling of producethe quadrupling of the means of maintaining that population. It is a remarkable fact, derived from the official returns, that whilst our exports of home produce and manufactures have increased about twofold in price since the commencement of the century, they have increased eightfold in quantity. Their real or declared value indicates the price. What is called the official value indicates the quantity. What is true of our exports is also true of our home-consumption. The great multiplication of produce is accompanied, proportionately, with a far greater diminution of price.

There is a just and eloquent passage in the RegistrarGeneral's Report upon the Census of 1851, which we gladly copy :

"With all that we now see around us, it is difficult to place ourselves in the position of the people of 1751; and to understand either the simplicity of the means, or the greatness of the task which has since been achieved by the people of England and Scotland. It is evident, however, that if the whole that they have accomplished had been proposed as a project, or been held out as the policy of the greatest minister then living, its difficulty and grandeur

If in the

would have overwhelmed him with confusion.
height of power he had thus addressed the people of Britain,
would he not have been heard with justifiable credulity?
--These islands and Ireland are occupied by the men of
many separate states that are now happily united. After
the settlement on the land of tribes, fleets, and armies of
Celts, of Saxons, of Danes, and of Normans-and after cen-
turies of patient culture, its fertile soil sustains seven millions
of people in its whole length from the Isle of Wight to the
Shetland Islands. We cannot-for the mighty power is not
given us-say, Let there be on the European shores of the
Atlantic ocean-three Great Britains. But the means exist
for creating on this land, in less than a hundred years, two
more nations, each in number equal to the existing popu-
lation, and of distributing them, over its fields, in cottages,
farms, and towns, by the banks of its rivers, and around its
immemorial hills; and they will thus be neither separated
by longer roads, nor wider seas, but be neighbours, fellow-
workers, and fellow-countrymen on the old territory;
wielding by machines the forces of nature, that shall serve
them with the strength of thousands of horses, on roads,
and seas, in mines, manufactories, and ships. Subsistence
shall be as abundant as it is now, and luxuries which are
confined to the few shall be enjoyed by multitudes. The
wealth of the country-its stock and its produce-shall
increase in a faster ratio than the people. All this shall
be accomplished without any miraculous agency, by the
progress of society,-by the diffusion of knowledge and
morals,--by improvements,-and improvements chiefly in
the institution of marriage-'that true source of human
offspring,' whence,

Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities

Of father, son, and brother, first were known.""

If the reader has rightly considered the various facts which we have presented, he will long before this have come to the conclusion, that it is for the general interests

of society that every invention, which has a tendency to diminish the cost of production, shall have the most perfect freedom to go forward. He will also have perceived that the exercise of this natural right, this proud distinction, of man, to carry on the work of improvement to the fullest extent of his capacity and knowledge, can never be wholly stopped, however it may be opposed. It may be suspended by the ignorance of a government--it may be clamoured down by the prejudice of a people; but the living principle which is in it can never be destroyed. To deny that this blessing, as well as many other blessings which we enjoy, is not productive of any particular evil, would be uncandid and unwise. Every change produced by the substitution of a perfect machine instead of an imperfect one, of a cheap machine instead of a dear one, is an inconvenience to those who have been associated with the imperfect and the dear machines. It is a change that more or less affects the interests of capitalists as well as of workmen. In a commercial country, in a highly civilized community, improvement is hourly producing some change which affects some interests. Every new pattern which is introduced in hardware deranges for a moment the interests of the proprietors of the old moulds. Every new book, upon any specific subject upon which books have formerly been written, lessens the value of the copyright of those existing books. What then? Is every improvement, which thus produces a slight partial injury, to be discountenanced, because of this inevitable condition which we find at every step in the march of society? Or rather, ought we not to feel that every improvement brings healing upon its wings, even to those for whom it is a momentary evil;-that if it displaces their labour or their capital for a season, it gives new springs to the general industry, and calls forth all labour and all capital to higher and more successful exertions? At every advance which improvement makes, the partial and temporary evils of improvement are more and more lessened. In the early stages of social refinement, when a

machine for greatly diminishing labour is for the first time introduced, its effects in displacing labour for an instant may be seen in the condition of great masses of people. It is the first step which is the most trying. Thus, when printing superseded the copies of books by writing a large body of people were put out of employ ;-they had to seek new employ. It was the same with the introduction of the spinning machinery,-the same with the power-loom. It would be presumptuous to say that no such great changes could again happen in any of the principal branches of human industry; but it may be said, that the difficulty of superseding our present expeditious and cheap modes of manufacture is daily increasing. The more machines are multiplied, that is, the more society approaches towards perfection, the less room is there for those great inventions which change the face of the world. We shall still go on improving, doubtless; but ingenuity will have a much narrower range to work in. It may perfect the machines which we have got, but it will invent fewer original machines. And who can doubt, that the nearer we approach to this state, the better will it be for the general condition of mankind? Who can doubt whether, instead of a state of society where the labourers were few and wretched, wasting human strength, unaided by art, in labours which could be better performed by wind and stream,-by the screw and the lever, -it would not be better to approach as nearly as we can to a state of society where the labourers would be many and lightly tasked, exerting human power in its noblest occupation, that of giving a direction by its intelligence to the mere physical power which it had conquered? Surely, a nation so advanced as to apply the labour of its people to occupations where a certain degree of intelligence was required, leaving all that was purely mechanical to machines and to inferior animals, would produce for itself the greatest number of articles of necessity and convenience, of luxury and taste, at the cheapest cost. But it would do more.

It

would have its population increasing with the increase of those productions; and that population employed in those labours alone which could not be carried on without that great power of man by which he subdues all other power to his use, his reason.

But it is not only science which has determined, and is more and more determining, the condition of the great body of operatives, but the organization of industry upon the factory principle, so universal and so powerful, has rendered it impossible for the future that the larger amount of the labour of a country should be regarded as an insulated force. It must work in conjunction with higher and more powerful forces.

In France, which, as a commercial and manufacturing country, was considerably behind the advance of England, it was a common practice, in many villages and small towns, not very long ago, for the weavers to make the looms and other implements of their trade. In the fifteenth century, in the same country, before an apprentice could be admitted to the privilege of a master-weaver, it was not only necessary for him to prove that he understood his trade as a weaver, but that he was able to construct all the machines and tools with which he carried on his craft. Those who know anything of the business of weaving will very readily come to the conclusion that the apprentice of the fifteenth century, whose skill was put to such a proof, was both an indifferent weaver and an indifferent mechanician ;—that in the attempt to unite two such opposite trades, he must have excelled in neither ;—and that in fact the regulation was one of those monstrous violations of the freedom of industry, which our ancestors chose to devise for the support of industry.

Carrying the principle of a division of labour to the other extreme point, we have seen that a vast number of persons are engaged in the manufacture of a piece of cloth, who, if individually set to carry the workmanship of that piece

* See Chapter XVII.

*