fequences; it is not confined to the nituation of a single inttant; but, like epic poetry, it can reprefent all the events of a long ftory, and exhibit a long train and fucceffion of connected and interelling fituations. It is capable therefore of affecting us much more than either ftatuary or painting. The ancient Romans used to thed tears at the reprefentations of their pantomimes, as we do at that of the moit interefting tragedies; an effect which is altogether beyond the powers of flatuary or painting. The ancient Greeks appear to have been a nation of dancers, and both their common and their flage dances feem to have been all imitative. The itage dances of the ancient Romans appear to have been equally fo. Among that grave people it was reckoned indecent to dance in private focieties; and they could therefore have no common dances. Among both nations imitation feems to have been confidered as effential to dancing. It is quite otherwife in modern times: though we have pantomime dances upon the ftage, yet the greater part even of our fiage dances are not pantomime, and cannot well be faid to imitate any thing. The greater pet of our common dances either never were pantomime, or, with a very few exceptions, have almoft all ceafed to be fo. This remarkable difference of character between the ancient and the modern dances feems to be the natural effect of a correfpondent differ ence in that of the mufic, which has accompanied and directed both the one and the other. In modern times we almoft always dance to inftrumental mufic, which being itself not imitative, the greater part of the dances which it directs, and as it were infpires, have cealed to be fo. In ancient times, on the contrary, they seem to have danced almost always to vocal mufic; which being neceffary and effentially imitative, their dances became fo too. The ancients feem to have had little or nothing of what is properly called inftrumental mufic, or of mufic compofed not to be fung by the voice, but to be played upon inftruments, and both their wind and their ftringed inftruments feem to have ferved only as an accompaniment and direction to the voice.. In the country it frequently happens that a company of young people take a fancy to dance, though they have neither fiddler nor piper to dance to. A lady undertakes to fing while the rest of the company dance: in most cafes the fings the notes only, without the words, and then the voice being little more than a musical inftrument, the dance is performed in the usual way, without any imitation. But if the fings the words, and if in* those words there happens to be fomewhat more than ordinary spirit and humour, immediately all the company, especially all the best dancers, and all thofe who dance most at their eafe, become more or lefs pantomimes, and by their geftures and motions exprefs, as well as they can, the meaning and ftory of the long. This would be fill more the cafe, if the fame perfon both danced and sung; a practice very common among the anci ents: it requires good lungs and a vigorous conftitution; but with these advantages and long practice, the very highest dances may be performed in this manner. I have feen a negro dance to his own fong, the war-dance of his own country, with fuch vehemence of action and expreffion, that the whole company, gentlemen as well as ladies, got up upon chairs and tables, to be as much as poffible out of the way of his fury. In the Greek language there are two verbs which both fignify to dance; each of which has its proper derivatives, fignifying a dance and a dancer. In the greater part of Greek authors, these two fets of words, like at others which are nearly fynonimous, are frequently confounded, and ufed promifcuously. According to the best critics, however, in ftria propriety, one of these verbs fignifies to dance and fing at the fame time, or to dance to one's own mufic. The other to dance without finging, or to dance to the mufic of other people. There is faid too to be a correfpondent difference in the fignification of their respective derivatives. In the choruffes of the ancient Greek tragedies, confifting fometimes of more than fifty perfons, fome piped and fome fung, but all danced, an danced to their own music. OBSERVATIONS on the OBJECTIONS again! MACHINES to shorten LABOUR: With fome important Confiderations on the Duties of ianu facturers respecting the Health and Morals of their Workmen. OBJECTIONS of a moral nature are fometimes urged against the introduction of machines by which human labour is confiderably fhortened. Great numbers of men and wo men, it is faid, are thus thrown out of employment: they are difmiffed almost without any warning, dr at lealt without a warning futhcient to afford fuch of them, as are qualified to undertake another occupation, an opportunity of providing one. But most of them, it is added, even if they had much longer notice, would be unable to avail themfelves of that refource; from their fex, their age, or their habits of life, they are incapable of commencing a new line of bufinefs; and even if they are capable, other trades are full, and will not receive them. Thus multitudes of honest and industrious poor are deprived of the poffibility of procuring a livelihood for themfelves and their families; they pine in mifery, in fick nefs, and in want; and driven at length to repel famine and nakedness by violence and plunder, from being the fupports, become the pefts of fociety. That these objections, which compaffion has fuggefted on the fight of incidental diftrefs, are to be difregarded, is by no means to be affirm ed. But they are pushed to an unreafonable length, when they are urged as generally conclufive against the admiffion of new machines by which labour is greatly diminished. How has mankind been enabled to emerge from a flate of barbarifm to civilization, to exchange dens and caves for comfort able houses, coverings of raw skins for clean and convenient clothes; a corns and wild fruits for falubrious food, unlettered ignorance for books and knowledge, but by the progreffive introduction and the rapid improvements of machinery? And are we prepared to fay that human life has attained to its highest degree of refinement? Or that the means which have brought it to its prefent flate ought not to be permitted to carry it further? Or that, while every nation around us is advancing in improvement, Great Britain alone is to fland ftill? Thofe fimple machines and implements, without which we now fhould be at a loss how to fubfift, were new in their day; and in many ins flances the invention of them undoubtedly diminished, perhaps annihilated, the denrand for that fpecies of labour which was before in great requelt. The boat-malter of early times, who first undermined the tree, and then formed it into fhape by fcraping it with oyfter-fhells and hollowing it with fire, had probably to lament the lofs of employment when a competitor arrived from a distance armed with the recently difcovered hatchet, and able to complete more canoes in a month than the other could in a year. The makers of hand-barrows and fcuttles would perceive the demand for their craft materially leffened, when a more coinmodious method of carriage took place on the introduction of carts. The fabricators of hand-bills found their work speedily fail into difufe on E the erection of machines for grinding corn by means of wind and water. In what fituation would the world now be, had these inventions been fucceffively profcribed out of favour to the old workmen? his profits, he would be bound in confcience to refrain; did it impofe a heavy drawback on the intrate, he ought to pay it with cheerfulness. But the dittreiles in quetion will rarely be great or permanent. Remedies are But let us not deny to the ob- every where at hand; and they are jections under confideration the weight commonly multiplied in a little time which they poffefs; nor be betrayed, by the very circumulance which renby a partiality for measures productive ders them neceffary. The generat of general good, into a neglect of any effect of shortening labour is not to attendant misfortunes of the poor. If leffen the number of labourers wanted, on the one hand the manufacturer acts but to enlarge the mafs of produce, laudably when he exerts himself in the and to augment the comforts of life. difcovery or the introduction of new Every fuccesful invention ultimately machines, or in the improvement of increafes the number of working machines already exifting, by which hands; partly by employing many his manufacture may be rendered in fabricating and conducting the new cheaper or better; on the other, he machinery, and in performing various is highly criminal if he does not with fubfequent operations on the articles equal earnestnefs exert himself to produced by it; but principally by guard against that diftrefs, which the rendering manufactures better and hafty adoption of inventions calculated cheaper, and thus creating fo vaft an for dispatch frequently occafions at firft additional demand for them at home among the workmen whofe labour they and abroad, as to caufe a much larger fuperfede. Let him not be hurried quantity of workmen to be occupied by unfeeling avarice or blind emula- in preparing them, than was emtion fuddenly to bring them into ufe ployed when they were made in the to a great extent. Let him ftudy to old manner and fold at the ancient provide employment for his ancient price. Such, for example, has evifervants in fome other line, especially dently been the effect of the introfor the women and the old men: and duction of cotton-mills. And further; at all events let him not turn them the new invention itself frequently adrift, until they have means of im- furnishes fome collateral and auxiliary mediately procuring bread for them- branches of employment, to which felves and their children in another the labour rendered needlefs by it occupation. This attention to the may easily be transferred. Most of welfare of his fellow-creatures, by thofe for whom provifion cannot thus whofe industry and toil he has been be made, will be able to find a place enriching himself, is required of him in a country like this, if time be alby his and their common matter. Did lowed them by the manufacturer for it force him to refrain from increafing fearch and enquiry, in one or other The appofitenefs of the following quotation from Dr. Smith, on the Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. page 203, will be a futhcient apology for the length of it. Though a great number of people thould be thrown all at once out of their ordinary employment and common method of fubfiftence, it would by no means follow that they would be thereby deprived either of employment or fubfiftence. By the reduction of the army and navy at the end of the late war, more than a hundred thousand foldiers and feamen, a number equal to what is employed in the greatest manufactures, were all at once thrown out of their ordinary employment; but though they, no doubt, fuffered fome inconveniency, they were not thereby deprived of all employment or fubfiftence. The greater part of the feamen, it is probable, gradually betook them. felves to the merchant fervice, as they could find occafion; and in the mean time both they and the foldiers were abforbed in the great mafs of the people, and employed in a great variety of occupations. Not only no great convulfion, but no fenilble "diforder ceive them. Inftances however will occur, in spite of the wifeft and kindest precautions on the part of the matter, of individual workmen deprived of fubfiftence by the erection of his machinery. Thefe the hand of him who has been the innocent cause of their diftrefs fhould be stretched out to relieve. But every man ought willingly to contribute in a reasonable proportion toward alleviating the evils incidentally produced by any one of thofe improvements in conducting manufactures, to which, collectively taken, fo large a fhare of the national strength and profperity is to be afcribed. of the numerous trades open to re- on. Of the first clafs are several proceffes on metallic fubitances. The pernicious effects of lead are proverbial, and the pales and other complaints frequent among thofe who are employed upon it. I have seen a young man at work in a manufactory of white lead, whofe complexion was rendered by his occupation as lived as the fubftance which he was preparing for fale. The men who are employed in lvering looking-glaffes often become paralytic; as is the cafe alfo with thole who work in quickfilver mines. This is not to be wondered at, if we may credit Mr. Boyle; who affures us that mercury has been feveral times found in the heads of artificers expofed to its fumes. In the Philofophical Tranfactions there is an account of a man who, having ceafed working in quickülver for fix months, had his body ftill fo impregnated with it, that by putting a piece of copper into his mouth, or rubbing it with his hands, it inantly acquired a filver: colour. I remember having feen at Birmingham a very flout man rendered paralytic in the space of fix months by being employed in fixing an amalgam of gold and filver on copper. He. itood before the mouth of a imall oven. ftrongly heated; the mercury was converted into vapour; and that vapour was inhaled by him.-The perfon I faw was very fenfible of the caufe of his disorder; but had not courage to withstand the temptation of high wages, which enabled him to There are other calamities affecting workmen in a very ferious manner, and with confequences deeply to be lamented, againit which the proprietor of a manufactory ought moft anxiously to guard; the dangers, namely, to which their health and morals are frequently expofed by the nature and circumstances of their employment. Such dangers will fitly be noticed in this place; ince, although they exist in nearly all manufactures, they are commonly moft formidable in thofe in which large and complicated machines collect a great number of workmen under the fame roof. Some manufactures impair the health of the workinen by the deleterious quality of the materials ufed; others, by the crowded rooms and vitiated air in which they are carried arofe from so great a change in the fituation of more than an hundred thousand men, all accustomed to the ufe of arms, and many of them to rapine and plunder. The number of vagrants was fcarce anywhere fenfibly increased by it; even the wages of labour were not reduced by it in any occupation, fo far as I have been able to learn, except in that of feamen in the merchant fervice. But if we compare together the habits of a foldier and of any fort of manufacturer, we shall find that thofe of the latter do not tend so much to difqualify him from being employed in a new trade, as thole of the former from being employed in any. The manufacturer has always been accustomed to look for his fubfitence from his labour only; the soldier to expect it from his pay. Application and industry have been familiar to the one; idleness and diffipation to the other. But it is furely much easier to change the direction of industry from one fort of labour to another, than to turn idlenes and dilipation to any. To the greater part of manufactures befides, it has already been obferved, there are other colateral manufactures of fo fimilar a nature, that a workman can easily transfer his industry from one of them to another.' Bishop Watlon's Chemical Effays, vol. iv. page 253. continue in a state of intoxication for three days in the week, instead of, what is the ufual practice, two.' Of manufactures which injure the health of the workmen, not by any noxious quality in the article operated upon, but by external circumitances ufually attending the operation, an example may be produced in that of cotton. The ready communication of contagion to numbers crowded together, the acceffion of virulence from pytrid efluvia, and the injury done to young perfons through confinement and too Jong continued labour,' are evils which we have lately heard afcribed to cotton-milts by perfons of the firit medical authority affembled to invelligate the fubject. To thefe must be added, if report speaks truth concerning the practice of fome cotton-mills, the cuftom of obliging a part of the children employed there to work all night; a practice which must greatly contribute toward rendering them feeble, difealed, and unfit for other labour, when they are difmiffed at a more advanced period of youth from the manufactory. To have recourse to every reafonable precaution, however expenfive, by which the health of the workmen may be fecured from injury, and to refrain from profecuting unw holefome branches of trade, until effectual precautions are discovered, is the indifpenfable duty of the proprietor of a manufactory. Let him not think himfelf at liberty to barter the lives of men for gold and filver. Let him not feek profit, by acting the part of an executioner. Let him ftation his workmen in large, dry, and well ventilated rooms. Let him conftantly prefer giving them their work to perform at home, whenever it can be done with tolerable convenience, to collecting them together into the fame apartment. Let him encourage them, where opportunity offers, to refide in villages and hamists, rather than in a crowded town. Let him inculcate on them in how great a degree cleanlinefs contributes to health; and impress them with the neceffity of invariably oblerving thofe many little regulations, which, though fingly too minute to be noticed in this place, have collectively much effect in preventing difeafe. Where his own efforts feem likely to fail, let him lay the matter before the ableft physicians, and fteadily put in practice the inftructions which he receives. And finally, let him exert his utmost abilities to discover innoxious procelles which may be fubftituted for fuch as prove detrimental to the perfons who conduct them; and direct by private folicitation, and on proper occafions, by public premiums, the attention of experienced artilts and manufacturers to the fame object. The fuccefs of his endeavours may in many cafes be found highly advantageous to him, not merely by preferving the lives of his moft fkilful workmen, but by faving fome valuable material formerly loft in the operation. But whether that be the cafe or not, he will at leaft reap a fatisfaction from them which he could not otherwife have enjoyed, that of reflecting on his profits with a quiet confcience. The morals of manufacturers affembled together in numerous bodies are at least as much endangered as their health. The danger fometimes arifes from time and opportunities for inftruction being denied; fometimes from the contagion of vice being unrestrained, and fhame itfelf extinguished by the univerfality of guilt. The former of thefe evils takes place in manufactories where children are employed; the latter, in all manu Whether cotton-mills in general are at prefent blameless on this fcore, I will not un iertake to decide. That fome have been highly blameable would fufficiently ap pear, were other proofs wanting, from the concluding paragraph of the report of the Manchester phyficians, addreffed to the county magistrates. We cannot excule ourfelves on the prefent occation from fuggefting to you who are the guardians of the public weal, this further very important confideration; that the rifing generation boult not be debarred from all opportunities of inftruction, at the only feaĵon of life in which they can be properly improved." |