Richmond Enquirer

Use of Machinery.—In the House of Commons, Sir R. Wilson presented a petition from a great number of persons employed in the leather trade.—They complained of great distress, which they attributed, among other things, to the general use of machinery, by which so much hand labour was dispensed with: they prayed that a duty might be imposed on the use of machinery as applied to manufacturers. On the question that the petition be brought up,

Mr. W. Smith said he should be the last man to advocate any thing which went to limit the comforts of the poor: but he could not suffer the present opportunity to pass without remarking on the great absurdity of the principles on which one prayer of the petition was founded. If the notions of the petitioners were to be followed, where would they stop? He contended that they should go on to abolish the use of any machinery until man was reduced to the state in which he was first in the world; but surely no person would contend that such an alteration would benefit any portion of the community. If this prayer of the leather-dressers was complied with, the next thing that would be objected to would be the loom; for no one could deny that that was as much a piece of machinery as the most complicated one used in the cotton manufacturies. Then he supposed they would have a petition from the agriculturists to abolish the use of the plough; for it would not be denied that by the use of that machine a great proportion of manual labour was saved; for a plough, with the assistance of two horses, and the guidance of one man, would turn up as much ground in a day as could otherwise be done by forty men. In short, there was nothing which we used in any machine which was not calculated to abridge human labour: and it would be impossible ever to drive it out of use. The principles on which the use of machinery rested was so obvious, that he thought the parties now complaining of it might be very easily made to understand it.