sumer has money to lay out upon new wants; and when these new wants are supplied cheaply, he goes on again and again to other new wants; that there are no limits, in fact, to his wants as long as he has any capital to satisfy them. Bear in mind this; that the first great object of every invention and every improvement is to confer a benefit upon the consumers, to make the commodity cheap and plentiful. The working man stands in a double character; he is both a producer and a consumer. But we will be bold to say that the question of cheapness of production is a much more important question to be decided in his favor as a consumer, than the question of dearness of production to be decided in his favor as a producer. The truth is, every man tries to get as much as he can for his own labor, and to pay as little as he can for the labor of others. If a mechanic, succeeding in stopping the machine used in his own trade, by any strange deviation from the natural course of things were to get higher wages for a time, he himself would be the most injured by the extension of the principle. When he found his loaf cost him two shillings instead of one; when he was obliged to go to the river with his bucket for his supply of water; when his coals cost a guinea a bushel instead of eighteen-pence; when he was told by the hosier that his worsted stockings were advanced from a shilling a pair to five shillings; when, in fact, the price of every article that he uses should be doubled, trebled, and,

in nine cases out of ten, put beyond the possibility of attainment;-what, we ask, would be the use to him of his advance in wages? Let us never forget that it is not for the employment of laborers, but for the benefit of consumers, that labor is employed at all. The steam-engines are not working in the coal-pits of Northumberland, and the ships sailing from the Tyne to the Thames, to give employment to colliers and to sailors, but to make coals cheap in London. If the people of London could have the coals without the steam-engines and the ships, it would be better for them, and better for the rest of the world. If they could get coals for nothing, they would have more produce to exchange for money to spend upon other things; and the comforts, therefore, of every one of us would be increased.

This increase of comfort, some of you may say, is a question that more affects the rich than it affects us. This again is a mistake. The whole tendency of the improvements of the last four hundred years has not only been to lift the meanest of you, in regard to a great many comforts, far above the condition of the rich four hundred years ago, but absolutely to place you, in many things, upon a level with the rich of your own day. You are surrounded, as we have constantly shown you throughout this book, with an infinite number of comforts and conveniences which had no existence two or three centuries ago; and those comforts and conveniences are not used only by a few,

but are within the reach of almost all men. Every day is adding something to your comfort. Your houses are better built,-your clothes are cheaper,-you have an infinite number of domestic utensils, whose use even was unknown to your ancestors,-you can travel cheaply from place to place, and not only travel at less expense, but travel ten times quicker than the richest man could travel two hundred years ago. Above all, you are not only advancing steadily to the same level in point of many comforts with the rich, but you are gaining that knowledge, which was formerly their exclusive possession. Keep fast hold of that last and best power; and you will learn what your true individual interest is, in every situation in which you can be placed: you will learn now, that it is useless in any way to struggle against that progress of society, whose tendencies are to make all of us more comfortable, more instructed, more virtuous, and, therefore, more happy.

We have endeavored to show, throughout this book, that the one great result of machinery, and of every improvement in art, is to lessen the cost of production; to increase the benefit to the consumer. But it is a most fortunate arrangement of the social state, as we have also shown you all along, that cheap production gives increased employment. The same class of false reasoners who consider that the wants of society are limited, cry out, it is better to have a population of men than of steam-engines. That might be true, if the

steam-engines did put out the men; but inasmuch as they increase the productions by which men are maintained, they increase the men. What has increased the population of England nearly ten-fold during the last five hundred years, but the improvement of the arts of life, which has enabled more men to live within the land? There is no truth so clear, that as the productions of industry multiply, the means of acquiring those productions 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 fifteen millions of heads of the British subjects of King William IV., and there were only five millions of the British subjects of Queen Anne, it is self-evident that the hat-makers have three times as much work as they had a century and a quarter ago. What has given the hat-makers three times as much work? The trebling of the population. And what has trebled the population? The trebling of produce, the trebling of the means of maintaining that population.

CHAPTER XIX.

If you have rightly considered the various facts which we have thus presented to you, you 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. You 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 clamored 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