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hasty Pamphlet, I have been to school to Dr Adam Smith, and falle
in love with his Mistress, Simplicity, and I know of no stage on which
her charms are more striking than on this.
Letter 11th
So far as to the choice of businesses. As to the new ones, I see
no reason, why any point should be made of multiplying them: a
single one, well chosen, may answer the purpose just as well as ever
so many more. I mention this, because though it may be easy to find
one species of manufacture, or five, or ten, that might answer, with
workmen so cramped, and in a situation so confined, it might not be quit
so easy to find fifty or a hundred. The number of hands for which
employment is to be found can scarcely be admitted as a reason
for multiplying the subjects of manufacture. In such a nation as
Great Britain, it is difficult to conceive that the greatest numbe
of hands that can be comprised in such an establishment should
be great enough to overstock the market: and, if our island is not big
enough, out planet is still bigger. In many species of manufacture
work is performed with more and more advantage, as every body
the more it can be divided: and in many stances, what sits bound
to that division is rather the number of hands the master can affor
to maintain, than any other circumstance.
When one turns to the Hard Labour Bill, it looks as if
the framers of it had been under some anxiety, to find out business
that they thought might do in their Penitentiary-houses, and to mak
known the results of their discoveries. It accordingly proposes for
consideration a variety of examples. For the offenders who were to be
worked hardest. 1. Treading in a wheel. 2. Drowing in a capstern for
turning a mill or other machine or engine. 3. Beating hemp.
4. Rasping logwood. 5 Chopping rags. 6. Sawing timber. 7. Working
at forges, 8. Smelting. For those who were to be more favour
1. Making ropes. 2. Weaving Sacks. 3 Spinning yarn. 4. Knitti
nets, a round dozen in the whole.
I find some difficulty however in conceiving to wha
use this instruction was destined, unless it were be the edification of the
class of legislators more frequently quoted for worth than knowledge
the Country Gentlemen. To some gentlemen of that respectable description
it might, for aught I know, be matter of consolation to see that
industry could find so many shapes to assume on such a stage. If
it was designed to give a view of the purposes to which manual labou
may be applied, it goes not very far, and there are publications enoug
that go some hundreds of times farther. If the former of its two cha
was designed as a specimen of such works, of a particularly
laborious case, as are capable of being carried on to the greatest advantage,
or with the greatest security, against workmen of so refractory a
complection; or if either chapter was destined as a specimen of employments
that required least extent of room, in any of these cases the specime
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