regular, general, and zealous industry. Unless, however, security of
property is enjoyed, as well as political liberty, industry, even if it
could spring up under such circumstances, must soon droop and decay. It is
a contradiction in terms to suppose that comprehensive views and desires
can exist and lead to action, when at the same time it is extremely
doubtful whether the objects of them could be realized, or, if realized,
whether they would not immediately be destroyed, or torn from those whose
labour, and skill, and anxious thought had acquired them.

But there are other causes to which we must ascribe the extension of
British manufactures and commerce; of these we shall only enumerate what we
regard as the principal and the most powerful: the stimulus which any
particular improvement in manufactures gives to future and additional
improvements, or rather, perhaps, the necessity which it creates for such
additional improvements; the natural operation of enlarged capital; the
equally natural operation of encreased wealth among the various classes of
the community; the peculiar circumstances in which Britain has been placed
since the termination of the war which deprived her of her American
colonies; and, lastly, her national debt. A short view of each of these
particulars will, we believe, sufficiently account for the present
unparalleled state of British manufactures and commerce.

The direct effect of improvement in the mode of manufacturing any article,
by the introduction of a more powerful machinery, is to encrease the
quantity, and to lower the price of that article. Hence it follows, that
those who manufacture it on the old plan must be undersold, unless they
also adopt such machinery; and as knowledge, both speculative and
practical, has greater chance to improve in proportion as it is spread,
from this cause, as well as from the more powerful cause of rival
interests, wherever improvements in manufactures have begun and been
extended, they are sure to advance.

That this is not theoretical doctrine requires only an appeal to what has
been effected, and is yet effecting in Britain, to prove. A very curious,
interesting, and instructive work might be written on the improvements in
the cotton machinery alone, which have been made in this country during the
last forty years: we mean interesting and instructive, not merely on
account of the tacts relative to mechanical ingenuity which it would
unfold, but on a