d sells all that it produces. And the meanest family, taken in
this way, does proportionably =sic= more buying and selling than the
richest state, taken in a body. Consider the whole earth as one state,
and it neither exports nor imports.
-=-

[end of page #270]

genious mechanics of the last century, (Mr. Vaucusson,) at the
expense of that government, in which were nearly all the curious
inventions brought forth in England, together with many not known in
it. Some Englishmen, in going through it, brought over new inventions
here, for which they obtained patents, and, by which, they, as well as
the public, were gainers, while the inventions lay useless and dormant
in France.

Invention is not a thing in a man's power, and great inventions are
generally more the effect of accident than of superior abilities; at any
rate, no encouragement is certain to produce invention, but it always
will produce improvement on invention. When a man has a patent for
fourteen years, he does every thing in his power to make the object of
that patent become as generally useful as possible, and this is only to
be done by carrying the improvements as far as he is able. {208}
Others, again, who have no patent, but are of the same trade,
endeavour to preserve their business by improvement, and to this
contest in excellence may be attributed the great progress, made in
England, in bringing manufactures to a higher degree of perfection
than in any other country.

The great inventions, from which others branch out and spring, are not
due, it has often been asserted, to natives of this country. Probably this
may be owing to the circumstance, that they were known before the
advancement of this country in any of the arts; but let that be as it
may, there are a vast number of inventions carried to greater

---
{208} This is sufficiently important to deserve to be illustrated by
some examples. The improvement of the steam-engine, by Mr. Watt,
was a matter of accident; an accident, indeed, that could not have
happened, had he been an ignorant man; but the improvement of it
was not accidental. It was, in consequence of great encouragement
given, and to the prolongation of the patent, by an express act of
parliament. This patent has been the occasion of almost totally
changing the machine, and of extending its use to a vast variety of
objects, to which it probably might never have been extended, had it
not been the sole business of a very able man