The National Intelligencer And Washington Advertiser

FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.

In England the improvements in machinery, agriculture, roads, and canals, have aided the exertions of the inhabitants, so much, that what was formerly the manual labor of 8,000,000 of people is now performed by 4,000,000, that is, the physical force of the country is doubled. Now suppose that the labor of each individual was before the rise of these improvements during 12 hours, equal to his support, it follows that by these improvements, he will be exonerated from half his labor; but if he prefers still to work 12 hours rather than six, it is plain he must earn double the amount of his necessary expenditure. The advantages then of these improvements will appear conspicuous, from this mode of statement. But superficial reasoners will say why has not such good effects followed in that country? Is there not innumerable instances of beggary and distress? Debts increasing, and private happiness sacrificed to support national glory? Or in other words, that the substance is lost, in the effort of catching at the shadow—these objections are valid, and deserve reply. The first considerations that present, is the grand spectacle of a people by force of genius emancipating themselves from the burden of six hours daily labor, by substituting in the place of corporeal toil the ingenious fabrications of the artist, enabling them to perform in 6 hours the manual work of 12. This is an abolition of slavery, more beneficial and more advantageous to man, because it embraces the whole civilized world, than even that of the African trade; for when a man's body is freed from excessive labor, his mind comes into more powerful action; if all the men in that community would work at a useful employment, six hours each day, it would not be more than what is necessary to a healthy existence, and every individual in the community might be said to take a healthy exercise rather than to consume his strength in incessant drudgery—avarice would become extinct because the reward of a pleasurable course of industry would be spontaneous, regular, and complete; the social virtues would expand, and the love of our neighbor would take the place of our self-love: but this is the state that ought to be, not that which actually exists. Now the reason of this is, that from the constitution of the government the most cool and unrelenting cruelty, a systematic antipathy to the species, is deemed a necessary tainting in the character of a prime minister; the business he has to transact renders this essential, such as in the African trade; the sovereignty of the ocean, which involves the impressment of seamen, the maltreatment of inoffensive neutrals, with the barbarous exercise of marine authority, on towns and cities exposed to their attacks; the wars in India; domestic insurrections, &c. &c. These different causes operate to throw half the population of England totally idle, or what is worse in a national view, their employment is of the destroying, and not of the creating kind. When we calculate the classes embraced by this observation, such as nobility of all kinds, and their domestics and pleasure animals, useless clergy, fighting men of all descriptions, tax gatherers, all artisans and merchants engaged in the purchase and sale of articles of luxury, &c. &c.—I say the vicious impulses which give rise to these establishments, is the cause of doubling the useful labor of one part, to supply the want, or waste (both equally bad) of exertion, in the other part, and that that half, so gratuitously supplied, (as respects labor), is not again applied to things of reproductive utility, that might increase the sum of general happiness; but on the contrary, in the hands of wicked rulers, the talent and industry of the nation become perverted to purposes the most inimical to the happiness of their own people more immediately, and of mankind in general more remotely. This sketch is intended to shew the reasons which prevent the people of Britain from enjoying the fruits of their improvements in a rational way: It inculcates in the most forcible manner, that physical advantages are lost to a community, unless by the aids of a sound religious and political morality, in the people and in the government, they are made to subserve the real, and not the fictitious or fantastic interests of the state. I hope to be forgiven for this apparent deviation from the subject more immediately considered, but as the progress of moral and physical improvement, to be beneficial, must always be conjunct, I could not evade a discussion so interesting to our fellow-citizens.