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turn your attention to this subject, and try to put your fellow citizens upon their guard against going so generally into the present rage for trade and manufactures in preference to agriculture; and point out to them the pernicious tendency of too ardent a pursuit after riches, and those sensual gratifications to which they so naturally pave the way.

Every judicious person will readily admit the utility of calling forth the industry of the country; but the danger seems to arise from the giving that industry too much of one direction. Manufactures, when they first spring up, afsume a pleasing and a smiling appearance; but as they advance, they collect together the profligate, the daring, and the licentious; till at length they present to the more innocent spectators a spectacle hideous, alarming, and dangerous. Perhaps the happiest era of any civilised country is, when its industry is judiciously distributed among the labourers, artizans, merchants, and other classes useful to society; and when no circumstances are allowed so to operate, as to induce an undue preference to be given to any one profession, more than what the accommodation of men in social life naturally call for; and when such attention is paid to merit, that the surest means of attaining honour and respectability in life requires a strict attention to those studies and pursuits which tend to elevate the mind, and add dignity to human nature. Such is certainly not the case in this country at present, where wealth is considered as alone sufficient to entitle any man to grasp at the highest honours: and this I consider as a necefsary conse

apprehensive that the chagrins you have met with might induce you to relinquish your intention respecting that particular, and several others, from a doubt that you might not get them all finished within the limits which you seemed to have prescribed to yourself. Permit me to exprefs a hope, that the cause of those chagrins will be removed, and that you will be allowed to gratify the wishes of your numerous readers by proceeding in your career with renovated vigour. In the mean while, I beg leave to offer a few suggestions with a view to induce discussion.

I am a native of one of the northern counties, in which manufactures have made rapid advances during the last twenty years, to the detriment, as I think, of agriculture; and, I am afraid, to the prejudice of the happiness and domestic comforts of the people also; though I scarcely dare hint at this in my native district for the people have universally now more money to spend than they used to have; they are, therefore, of course, reckoned more easy in their circumstances, and more happy; for wealth and happinefs are now deemed nearly synonymous terms. For my own part, I do not view them in that light: and if I did, I would make a great distinction between having much money to spend, and being wealthy; for one man may have ten thousand pounds a year to spend, yet be very poor; and another may be "pafsing rich" who has not a hundred to expend. Taking things in this point of view, I sincerely believe, that our grandfathers were more wealthy than we are, because they had fewer wants unsatisfied. `Pursuing this train of reasoning, I sincerely wish that you, sir, would

turn your attention to this subject, and try to put your fellow citizens upon their guard against going so generally into the present rage for trade and manufactures in preference to agriculture; and point out to them the pernicious tendency of too ardent a pursuit after riches, and those sensual gratifications to which they so naturally pave the way.

Every judicious person will readily admit the utility of calling forth the industry of the country; but the danger seems to arise from the giving that industry too much of one direction. Manufactures, when they first spring up, afsume a pleasing and a smiling appearance; but as they advance, they collect together the profligate, the daring, and the licentious; till at length they present to the more innocent spectators a spectacle hideous, alarming, and dangerous. Perhaps the happiest era of any civilised country is, when its industry is judiciously distributed among the labourers, artizans, merchants, and other classes useful to society; and when no circumstances are allowed so to operate, as to induce an undue preference to be given to any one profefsion, more than what the accommodation of men in social life naturally call for; and when such attention is paid to merit, that the surest means of attaining honour and respectability in life requires a strict attention to those studies and pursuits which tend to elevate the mind, and add dignity to human nature. Such is certainly not the case in this country at present, where wealth is considered as alone sufficient to entitle any man to grasp at the highest honours: and this I consider as a necefsary conse

adventure which forms such a striking characteristic of the present times.

It has been admitted, however, by the most sensible men in all ages, that a proper education may be considered as the source of the greatest benefits to society as well as individuals, seeing that the earliest impressions determine the character of man, and operate with good or bad effect the rest of his life: accordingly we find, that among those nations of antiquity to which we look up with admiration, education was deemed a business of the most serious concern, that could only be completed at an advanced period of life. Whatever, therefore, operates so as to shorten too much that necefsary and useful period of time that is spent in acquiring virtuous instruction, or has a tendency to corrupt the sources of education itself, is certainly in the most alarming degree hostile to the interests and happiness of mankind. But a much extended manufacture, by giving too early employments to children of both sexes, of the middling, as well as the common rank of life, takes them too soon, or altogether from school, where they not only acquired necefsary information, but likewise habits of order and subordination, which they naturally carried into the world with them, formerly with good effects to themselves and society.

Not only are young minds thus prevented from acquiring competent notions of moral rectitude, and a steadiness in the conduct which that would naturally suggest, but their principles are even positively perverted. No one will deny, that the present state of manufactures has a certain tendency to corrupt the

young mind. The first objects that present themselves to the growing pafsions, are fortune and splendour; and young people, seeing that these objects obtain the incense and homage of all around them, they naturally come to consider these as alone deserving their attention; so that the moral virtues are seldom adverted to or deemed of importance enough to be allowed to bar the way to the great object of all their wishes-money.

The more manufactures extend themselves, the more do they throw society into an unnatural state, when considered under a variety of points of view. By collecting many persons together into large bodies, they give rise to an infinity of evils. As ingenuity or dexterity in some particular department is a much stronger recommendation into that community than purity of morals, or rectitude of mind, these last are seldom inquired into when one solicits for admittance among them: hence the worthlefs are mixed with the young of both sexes, who, not having had their minds steadied by the principles of a well regulated education, become an easy prey to the contagion of bad example; so that the vicious infection of wickedness and debauchery quickly infects the whole body.

In every situation these evils are experienced in a lefser or greater degree; but it becomes particularly destructive since the late introduction of machinery so universally in manufactures; which, by admitting the operations of children, collect together great bodies of infants, as they may be called, without any proper checks upon their conduct; so that the whole body of

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