Читать книгу Description of the Process of Manufacturing Coal Gas. For the Lighting of Streets Houses, and Public Buildings онлайн

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It is likewise true that the manufacturing classes often suffer great want by the occasional suspension of employment, and sometimes actual oppression, by the demand for labour; but that involves a question more immediately connected with political economy than the present subject.

It is not the machinery that is in fault in such cases, but those speculators who occasion an inordinate excess of employment, or those statesmen who, with their folly, derange the great machine of human interests and intercourse.

Every invention which tends to diminish the labour of men must be a benefit to the species; and it is wicked to argue against the use of any thing from its occasional abuse.

If the application of mechanical inventions thus tends to improve the humanity of the public, if it reduces the necessity of hard labour, and diminishes the danger of many occupations which we contend it does, they who contribute to this object deserve our respect and gratitude.

It may be true that we have now no such minds as those of Homer, or Bacon, or others of their stamp; but we should reflect that the circumstances which produced such characters are gone by, and great faculties have found other objects and other materials to work with.