Читать книгу Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks онлайн

5 страница из 53

The commercial importance of locks—though of course never seriously questioned when once fairly brought before one’s attention—has been recently rendered so apparent as to have risen to the position of a public topic. If a strong room, containing gold and silver, notes and bills, books and papers—if such a room be necessarily shielded from intrusion, it becomes no less necessary that the shield should be really worthy of its name, trusty and reliable: a good lock is here nearly as indispensable as a faithful cashier. And without dwelling on such an auriferous picture as a room fall of gold, we shall find ample proof of the commercial importance of lock-making in the ordinary circumstances by which we are every day surrounded. Until the world becomes an honest world, or until the honest people bear a larger ratio than at present to the dishonest, the whole of our movables are, more or less, at the mercy of our neighbours. Houses, rooms, vaults, cellars, cabinets, cupboards, caskets, desks, chests, boxes, caddies,—all, with the contents of each, ring the changes between meum and tuum pretty much according to the security of the locks by which they are guarded.