work of a well regulated mechanism, he can learn it in a short period; and when he transfers his services from one machine to another, he varies his task, and enlarges his views by thinking on those general combinations which result from his and his companion's labours. Thus, that cramping would set one at variance with the others, is justly reprehensible, as a disorganiser, an enemy to the public family, and its individual members. The man who would oppress or depress either, deserves the indignation of the community, and until better disposed, should be left to help himself. "But the evil most to be deprecated, is not that one man is poor and another rich, it is not that the poor are oppressed by the rich-the evil has a foundation deeper and broader than has yet been suggested. The condition of society would be much improved, men would be made more equal and more respected, by a more general diffusion of that information which is useful in all situations, by encouraging habits of industry and temperance, by raising the moral character above the vices which disgrace and degrade men. There is poverty, want and wretchedness everywhere; more or less of these are in all families and in all places. And why is it so? own; every man is chargeable with a portion of it. The remedy is as near home as The fault is our the disease. The evil is so common the cause is overlooked. "It is ignorance. The want of that knowledge of men and things, necessary to a due estimation of the rights and duties belonging to the various situations in life. People will neither read, think, or reflect as they ought. They neglect the mind, which distinguishes them from the beasts of burden; and they care as little for their children as for themselves.-There is no want of schools. The means of instruction are furnished, and they are accessible to every child at the public expense. Add to this the teachings which may and ought to be acquired at home, and at church, with a due improvement of all, and the evils which originate in ignorance will cease; the poor boy by habitual industry, will become a philosopher, a statesman, or a divine;' and shed around him the benign influence of his great and good works, enjoy the honour and confidence of the public, and the high satisfaction of having acted his part well, which is the best of all rewards. But poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction.' "It is idleness. The parent of a thousand evils and as many vices. The legitimate progenitor of poverty-many will not work. Some that are most busy do nothingwhat they acquire they waste, and with it waste themselves. The idler not only injures himself, but others come within his baneful influence. It requires many hands to do the idler's work. he shall beg in the harvest and have nothing.' The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore "It is extravagance. Mankind are deluded by fashion. Dress, show, and equipage, hold too high a place among their household gods. They live beyond their income. The luxuries of life are its bane,-the canker worms that eat up a man's substance and turn him out of his house, and send his children begging. "It is intemperance-a near relation to the preceding. The morning, noon, and evening dram, and the rum bottle at home, will finish the mischief and consume all that is left of body and mind. Of the reward of these, others may speak; of their degradation none can doubt. Such evils are more or less prevalent among all classes and ranks, sinking, destroying, and brutalising man. himself. It is the moral courage and determined energy of the philanthropist who The remedy is for each one to reform would make men happier, by making them better; and not the doubtful dogmas of the mere politician, or the cold philosophy and metaphysical reasonings of a cloistered 'book-worm.' "Moral evils are the real and alarming cause of complaint. Remove them, and there will be more equality, less poverty, less murmuring, and less discontent. The well directed power of moral influence, will effect the surest cure; it will do for society, what the lever of Archimedes would in mechanics, move the world and overturn the reservoirs of vice. "New legislation cannot reach the source of the evil, or heal the disease which is weakening and wasting the energies of our political and social relations." "Operatives in England. The idea most prominent in the minds of most people in relation to the great manufacturing establishments of Great Britain is, that they are sources of immense individual and national wealth; and the next is, that they enclose within their walls a demoralised and over-worked population. The Edinburgh Review, of the faculties, that narrowing of the mind, that stunting of the frame, which were ascribed, and not unjustly, by moral writers, to the division of labour, cannot, in common circumstances, occur under the equable distribution of industry. How superior in vigour and intelligence are the factory mechanics in Lancashire, where the latter system of labour prevails, to the handicraft artisans of London, who to a great extent continue slaves to the former. The one set is familiar with almost every physico-mechanical combination, while the other seldom knows any thing beyond the pin-head sphere of his daily task." Copy of a letter from Benjamin Hawkins, accompanying the President's communication to Congress, December 8, 1801. "The present spring, the agent has delivered to Indian women, 100 pair of cotton cards, and 80 spinning wheels; there are eight looms in the nation, four of them wrought by Indian or half breed women, and the remainder by white women. There is a woman employed as an assistant, to teach the to which we recur for the purpose of saying a few words on this interesting point, strongly contradicts the statements that have been circulated, chiefly, it says, by Mr. Sadler's famous factory report, in regard to the ruinous effects of factory labour. The publication of Mr. Sadler's report and the discussion consequent hereupon, led to the appointment by the British government of a commission to enquire on the spot into the actual condition of the labourers, which enquiry resulted in proving, says the Edinburgh Review, that the representations in regard to the pernicious influence of this kind of labour have been grossly exaggerated. Instances of abuses are declared to be rare, and it is asserted that, speaking generally, factory work people, including children, are as healthy and contented as any class of the community obliged to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. 66 'Mr. Tufnel, one of the commissioners who went through Lancashire, makes statements which appear conclusive as to the condition of labourers employed in factories. Of all the common prejudices with regard to factory labour, none, says this gentleman, is more unfounded than that which ascribes to it excessive tedium and irksomeness above all other occupations, owing to its being carried on in conjunction with the unceasing motion of the steam engine.' This erroneous opinion proceeds from the belief that because the motion of the steam engine is incessant, the labour accompanying it is incessant also. But the reverse of this is the fact. The way to prevent an employment being incessant is to introduce a steam engine. Three fourths of the children employed in cotton mills are not actively at work for more than four hours out of the twelve. The English speak always of steam, because with them it has, for all kinds of large factories, superseded almost entirely the use of water power. In this country, water power continues to be used in nearly all our large manufacturing establishments. The result, of course, is precisely the same as regards the human labour required in conjunction. "The stories as to the immorality of persons employed in factories, are declared to be utterly false. The evidence of various clergymen of Manchester intimately acquainted with the factory proprietors, goes to show that the morals of the persons engaged in mills are quite as good as those of any other class of people. This account coincides with what is known to be the fact in this country as to this important part of the factory system. From gentlemen connected with the large manufactories in the neighbourhood of this city, we have heard an equally good report. The manufacturing population of Lowell, Massachusetts, five thousand of whom are females, is as moral as any in the world. Nay, we doubt whether in any community in the United States, or any where else, in town or country, comprising the same number of inhabitants, there is so little vice as in Lowell, a town which has grown up to sudden prosperity solely through manufacturing industry. "In regard to the effects on health, enquiries resulted in the conclusion, that 'factory labour is decidedly not injurious to health or longevity, compared with other employments.' " women how to spin and weave; and the agent has appointed as a temporary assistant, a young Englishman, from a manufactory in Stockport, England, who can make looms and spinning wheels, and every thing appertaining to them, and he understands weaving. He will in a few days have a ninth loom set up at the residence of the agent. The women have this spring adopted this part of the plan with spirit, and have promised to follow the directions of the agent with exactitude. These Indian women, of one family, have been spinning for two years only, have clothed themselves well, are proud of the exertions they have made, and are, by their conduct, a stimulus to their country women. One of the looms and two of the spinning wheels in use, were made by an Indian chief, for his own family. "The chiefs, who were apprehensive at first, that if their women could clothe and find themselves by their own exertions, they would become independent of the degraded connection between them, have had proofs that the link is more firm, in proportion as the women are more useful, and occupied in domestic concerns." Perhaps," says Babbage, "to the sober eye of inductive philosophy, these anticipations of the future may appear too faintly connected with the history of the past. When time shall have revealed the future progress of our race, those laws which are now obscurely indicated, will then become distinctly apparent; and it may possibly be found that the dominion of mind over the material world advances with an ever accelerating force. "Even now, the imprisoned winds which the earliest poet made the Grecian warrior bear for the protection of his fragile bark; or those which, in more modern times, the Lapland wizards sold to the deluded sailors; these, the unreal creations of fancy or of fraud, called, at the command of science, from their shadowy existence, obey a holier spell: and the unruly masters of the poet and the seer become the obedient slaves of civilised man. "Nor has the wild imagination of the satirist been quite unrivaled by the realities of after years: as if in mockery of the college of Laputa, light almost solar has been extracted from the refuse of fish; fire has been sifted by the lamp of Davy; and machinery has been taught arithmetic instead of poetry. "In whatever light we examine the triumphs and achievements of our species over the creation submitted to its power, we explore new sources of wonder. But if science has called into real existence the visions of the poet-if the accumulating knowledge of ages has blunted the sharpest and distanced the loftiest of the shafts of the satirist, the philosopher has conferred on the moralist an obligation of surpassing weight. In unveiling to him the living miracles which teem in rich exuberance around the minutest atom, as well as throughout the largest masses of ever-active matter, he has placed before him resistless evidence of immeasurable design. Surrounded by every form of animate and inanimate existence, the sun of science has yet penetrated but through the outer fold of nature's majestic robe; but if the philosopher were required to separate, from among those countless evidences of creative power, one being, the masterpiece of its skill; and from that being to select one gift, the choicest of all the attributes of life-turning within his own breast and conscious of those powers which have subjugated to his race the external world, and of those higher powers by which he has subjugated to himself that creative faculty which aids his faltering conceptions of a Deity, -the humble worshipper at the altar of truth would pronounce that being, man; that endowment,-human reason. "But however large the interval that separates the lowest from the highest of those sentient beings which inhabit our planet, all the results of observation, enlightened by all the reasonings of the philosopher, combine to render it probable that, in the vast extent of creation, the proudest attribute of our race is but, perchance, the lowest step in the gradation of intellectual existence. For, since every portion of our own material globe, and every animated being it supports, afford, on more scrutinising enquiry, more perfect evidence of design, it would indeed be most unphilosophical to believe that those sister spheres, glowing with light and heat radiant from the same central source-and that the members of those kindred systems, almost lost in the remoteness of space, and perceptible only from the countless multitude of their congregated globes-should each be no more than a floating chaos of unformed matter; or, being all the work of the same Almighty Architect, that no living eye should be gladdened by their forms of beauty, that no intellectual being should expand its faculties in deciphering their laws." CHAPTER V. THE VALUE AND USES OF PROPERTY. 1 "The sense to value riches, with the art To enjoy them, and the virtue to impart,— "Alas! for the sordid propensities of modern days, when every thing is coined into gold, and this once holy-day planet of ours is turned into a mere working-day world.' ” IRVING. It cannot be concealed, that there have been apprehensions of the evil effects of manufacturing establishments in this country, but these forebodings have been chiefly prospective. It is not pretended that they have yet been productive of evil; indeed, the evidence is positive, that much good has been produced. With regard to the state of Rhode Island, I had an opportunity of knowing its moral condition previous to 1812; and I have since traveled in nearly every part of the state, and the change for the better, especially in the manufacturing districts, is incredible. No one but an eye witness could believe that such a favourable change of society could have taken place, in the short period of twentyfive years. It is true, that the abuse of these institutions may produce bad results, but the abuse is no argument against the thing itself. I am persuaded, that wherever a village is under good regulations, that the tendency is altogether favourable to morals and intelligence. There is, therefore, no more evil to be dreaded, in prospective, from the system of manufacturing for ourselves, than there is from the system of self-government; they may be turned to an evil purpose; and what blessing of heaven may not? But while a love of virtue and liberty remains, these institutions will be cherished with confidence and advantage to the whole community. Sufficient testimony has been adduced to prove that the present state of American manufactures is superior to any in the world, as it respects the rate of wages, the means of intellectual improvement, and their moral condition. If the introduction of labour-saving machinery, and of the whole manufacturing system, with all its accompaniments, had proved detrimental to the good order of society; if it had endangered the liberties of the |