MAN UFACTURES

SECTION I.

ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES WHICH REGULATE THE APPLICATION OF MACHINERYTO MANUFACTURES AND THE MECHANICAL ARTS.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES.

There is, perhaps, no single circumstance which distinguishes our Country so remark-—ably from all others, as the vast extent to which we have carried our contrivances ofTools and Machines for forming all those conveniencies, of which so large a quantity isconsumed by almost every class of the community. The amount of patient thought,of repeated experiment, of happy exertion of genius, by which our Manufactures havebeen created and carried to their present excellence, is scarcely to be imagined. If welook around the rooms we inhabit, or through those storehouses of every convenience,of every luxury that man can desire, which deck the crowded streets of our larger cities,we shall find in the history of each article, of every fabric, a series of failures whichhave gradually led the way to excellence; and we shall notice, in the Art of makingeven the most insignificant, processes calculated to excite our admiration by theirsimplicity, or to rivet our attention by their unlooked-for results.

The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficultyof the production of Manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that Country onlyin which it is concentrated; distant Kingdoms have participated in its advantages. Theluxurious natives of the East,* and the ruder inhabitants of the African desert, are alikeindebted to our looms. The produce of our factories seems to have preceded even ourmost enterprising travellers. The cotton of India is conveyed by British ships round

The Bandana handkerchiefs manufactured at Glasgow have long superseded those which are genuine,

and are now consumed in large quantities both by the natives and Chinese .” Crawfurd’s Indian Archipelago,vol. iii. p. 505.

t Captain Clapperton, when on a visit at the Court of the Sultan Bello, states, “ provisions wereregularly sent me rom the Sultan’s table on pewter dishes with the London stamp, and I even had apiece of meat served up on a white wash-hand basin of English manufacture." Clapperton’s Journey, p. 83.

VOL. VII.

B