PREFACE.

a manufacture in a country, it is the best of all proofs, that its home is elsewhere. Nor is there any nation so destitute of local advantages, but what there must be certain branches of industry in which, if it pleases, it may excel or, at least, equal every other nation.

It is misapplied labour alone, which has any thing to fear from the unfolding of the Book of Arts to all the world; such manufactures as would have long since perished, but for the monopolies, and injurious privileges of all sorts, by which they have been upheld, that are likely to take their flight in search of more auspicious climes. Every country will preserve, precisely, those manufactures. which are most adapted to the genius and circumstances of its inhabitants; and, in proportion to the amount of labour thus saved, from unprofitable pursuits, will the produce of art be every where multiplied, and the comfort, wealth, and refinement, that follow in its train, augmented.

Happy are we to reflect that, in these anticipations, we concur in opinion not only with the philosophic few, who in this, as at former periods, precede the general march of society, but with all the well-informed, both among the governing and governed, of the age in which we live. To establish a free interchange of commodities between Britain and other nations, by the abolition of all commercial restrictions, is but one portion of that liberal policy, which has made the existing administration of this country, at once so popular and so powerful. To establish a free interchange of thoughts and ideas-of enquiry and information-of discoveries, inventions, and improvements, in the arts and sciences-has been equally an object of solicitude and negotiation, with Mr. Canning and his colleagues. Nor, as this enlightened statesman has somewhere, in his official correspondence,* observed, "because Great Britain can receive

* In his correspondence, we believe, with Mr. Pinckney, on the Orders in Council.

MECHANICS'

MAGAZINE. YORK

Again, for that other conceit, that learning should undermine the reverence of laws and
government; it is, assuredly, a mere depravation and calumny without all shadow of truth.
*** It is, without controversy, that learning doth make the minds of men gentle,
generous, maniable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish,
thwarting, and mutinous. And the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering
that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times, have been most subject to tumults,
seditions, and changes."
LORD BACON.

LONDON:

KNIGHT AND LACEY,

PATERNOSTER ROW;

M.DCCC.XXVII.

D. SIDNEY, Printer, Northumberland Street, Strand.

PREFACE

TO

VOLUME THE SIXTH.

THE art of printing, though so peculiarly fitted to be the nurse and guardian of all the other arts of life, must be allowed to have lent them its aid but reluctantly and slowly. For ages, after its introduction, it was almost exclusively devoted to the service of poets, philologists, historians, and philosophers; and it was still chiefly to personal transmission, from father to son, that mankind had to look for the preservation of their acquisitions of mechanical knowledge and skill. Hence the monopoly of particular arts, by particular castes and families; hence the confinement of others to one or two spots on the earth's vast surface; hence the obscurity in which so many of them have remained shrouded, while the clouds of the night of barbarism have been clearing away from all around them; hence that rudeness and imperfection which, in not a few, attest the uniform influence of secresy and seclusion on the progress of improvement; and hence the fact, so fruitful of painful reflection to the man of science and philanthropist, that numerous processes of the greatest value to the arts and to humanity, have been lost for ever to the world.

It is but as yesterday that that master art, which defies all such hazards, and sets at nought all such limitations, has