PART FOURTH.

Of CONSEQUENCES that refult from the Advancement of CIVIL and COMMERCIAL ARTS.

T is evident, that, however urged by a sense of neceffity, and a defire of convenience, or favoured by any advantages of fituation and policy, a people can make no great progrefs in cultivating the arts of life, until they have separated, and committed to different perfons, the feveral tasks, which require a peculiar fkill and attention. The favage, or the barbarian, who muft build and plant, and fabricate for himself, prefers, in the interval of great alarms and fatigues, the enjoyments of floth to the improvement of his fortune: he is, perhaps, by the diverfity of his wants, difcouraged from industry; or, by his divided attention, pre

vented from acquiring fkill in the management of any particular fubject.

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THE enjoyment of peace, however, and the prospect of being able to exchange one commodity for another, turns, by degrees, the hunter and the warrior into a tradefman and a merchant. The accidents which diftribute the means of fubfiftence unequally, inclination, and favourable opportunities, affign the different occupations of men; and a fenfe of utility leads them, without end, to fubdivide their profeffions,

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THE artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities. Every undertaker in manufacture finds, that the more he can fubdivide the tasks of his workmen, and the more hands he can employ on feparate articles, the more are his expences diminished, and his profits, increafed. The confumer too requires, in every kind of commodity, a workmanfhip more perfect than hands employed on a variety of fubjects can produce; and the progrefs of commerce is but a continued fubdivifion of the mechanical arts.

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EVERY craft may engrofs the whole of a man's attention, and has a myftery which muft be, ftu died or learned by a regular apprenticeship. Nations of tradefmen come to confift of members, who,

beyond their own particular trade, are ignorant of all human affairs, and who may contribute to the preservation and enlargement of their commonwealth, without making its intereft an object of their regard or attention. Every individual is diftinguished by his calling, and has a place to which he is fitted. The favage, who knows no diftinction but that of his merit, of his fex, or of his

fpecies, and to whom his community is the fovereign object of affection, is aftonished to find, that in a scene of this nature, his being a man does not qualify him for any station whatever he flies to the woods with amazement, distaste, and averfion.

By the feparation of arts and profeffions, the fources of wealth are laid open; every fpecies of material is wrought up to the greatest perfection, and every commodity is produced in the greatest abundance. The ftate may estimate its profits and its revenues by the number of its people. It may procure, by its treafure, that national confideration and power, which the favage maintains at the expence of his blood.

THE advantage gained in the inferior branches of manufacture by the feparation of their parts, feem to be equalled by thofe which arife from a fimilar device in the higher departments of policy and war. The foldier is relieved from every care, but that of his fervice; ftatefmen divide the bufinefs of civil government into fhares; and the fer-

vants of the public, in every office, without being skilful in the affairs of state, may fucceed, by obferving forms which are already established on the experience of others. They are made, like the parts of an engine, to concur to a purpose, without any concert of their own: and, equally blind with the trader to any general combination, they unite with him, in furnishing to the ftate its refources, its conduct, and its force.

THE artifices of the beaver, the ant, and the bee, are afcribed to the wifdom of nature. Those of polished nations are ascribed to themselves, and are supposed to indicate a capacity fuperior to that of rude minds. But the establishments of men, like thofe of every animal, are fuggested by nature, and are the refult of inftinct, directed by the variety of fituations in which mankind are placed. Those establishments arose from fucceffive improvements that were made, without any fenfe of their general effect; and they bring human affairs to a ftate of complication, which the greatest reach of capacity with which human nature was ever adorned, could not have projected; nor even when the whole is carried into execution, can it be comprehended in its full extent.

WHO could anticipate, or even enumerate, the Leparate occupations and profeffions by which the members of any commercial state are diftinguished; the variety of devices which are practifed in fepa

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rate cells, and which the artist, attentive to his own affair, has invented, to abridge or to facilitate, his feparate task? In coming to this mighty end, every generation, compared to its predeceffors, may have appeared to be ingenious; compared to its followers, may have appeared to be dull: And human ingenuity, whatever heights it may have gained in a fucceffion of ages, continues to move with an equal pace, and to creep in making the last as well as the firft ftep of commercial or civil improvement.

Ir may even be doubted, whether the measure of national capacity increafes with the advancement of arts. Many mechanical arts, indeed, require no capacity; they fucceed beft under a total suppres fion of fentiment and reafon; and ignorance is the mother of industry as well as of fuperftition. Re flection and fancy are fubject to err; but a habit of moving the hand, or the foot, is independent of either. Manufactures, accordingly, profper moft, where the mind is leaft confulted, and where the workshop may, without any great effort of imagi nation, be confidered as an engine, the parts of which are men.

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THE foreft has been felled by the favage without the ufe of the axe, and weights have been raifed without the aid of the mechanical powers. The merit of the inventor, in every branch, probably deserves a preference to that of the performer; and he who invented a tool, or could work without its Rf affiftance!