ng rivalled a sort of discouragement and dismay.
This is one cause, but there are others.

So far as methods of working and machinery are connected, the
imitating nation has the advantage; it copies the best sort of machine,
and the best manner of working at once. The workmen have neither an
attachment to the old inferior methods, nor do they use old inferior
machines, to avoid the expense of new ones. {172} In short, they
adopt all improvements without much additional expense; and, as
men's minds are always more occupied in thinking about a new object
than an old one, they are even more likely to make improvements.

As to difficulties in rivalling a nation in skill, in any mechanical art,
there are none. The only difficulties in manufactures are in the
inventions and improvements, and those have been overcome by the
leading nation, and are no difficulties to that which follows. There are,
indeed, some arts which require particular talents, and a real exertion
of genius; but those are so few in number, and have so little
connection with the common affairs of mankind, or the wealth of
nations, that they do not deserve to be noticed.

There is nothing in the art of weaving, or working in metals, or in any
other material for common use, that is of such difficulty but that any
man, with a common capacity, may do it nearly as well as any other
man. The habits and manners of mankind, their disposition to labour,
and the nature of the government under which they live, may
encourage or discourage manufacturing; but both the strength and
capacity of any of the natives of Europe, taking them on an average,
are fully sufficient to enable them to excel in any work.

---
{172} Where machines are very expensive, new improvements, that
require other machinery, are sometimes crushed and rejected on that
account. To adopt them, a man must sometimes begin by sacrificing
half his fortune, by destroying his old machinery.

There have been several instances of this seen, particularly in the
making of iron, when it was proposed to convert the rough gueze into
good malleable iron bar, by rolling it at a welding heat, instead of
hammering it by a forge-mill.
-=-

[end of page #212]

{Here appears at page 212 the third chart, entitled
"Chart
Shewing the Amount of the
Exports and Imports
-of-
ENGLAND
to and from all parts
from 1800 to 1805"}

The British nation has begun to seek for wealth from agriculture. It
had long been the