Page:A Dissertation on the Construction of Locks (1815).pdf/34

 From the various methods which have been successively used to secure property, or to insure personal safety, it may be collected that the arts of violation have improved at least in an equal degree with the contrivances which mechanical ingenuity hath invented and applied for security. And this evil has arisen (in the case of Locks) from the misapplied efforts of ingenious mechanics, to effect that by a complex principle, which a simple one only can produce. In proof of one part of this proposition, I may refer to the most perfect Locks, that ever were constructed with fixed wards; to demonstrate the other, I shall give a specification of my own.

The idea of constructing a Lock that might resist every application and effort of art, was first suggested to me (as I have before observed) by the alarming increase of ; which, there is great reason to believe, are as often perpetrated by perfidious servants, or accomplished by their connivance, as by any means that are used by the common house-breaker. In this view of the evil to be remedied, it was evident, that a Lock or fastening, which might effectually exclude the one, would be no security against the other; and that no Lock would completely answer its