Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/40

6 increased about 15 per cent., or about 52 per cent. upon the whole period of thirty years, the population of these towns has, on the average, increased 132 per cent. After this statement, there requires no further argument to demonstrate the vast importance to the well-being of this country, of making the interests of its manufacturers well understood and attended to.

(4.) The advantages which are derived from machinery and manufactures seem to arise principally from three sources: The addition which they make to human power.—The economy they produce of human time.—The conversion of substances apparently common and worthless into valuable products.

(5.) Of additions to human power. With respect to the first of these causes, the forces derived from wind, from water, and from steam, present themselves to the mind of every one; these are, in fact, additions to human power, and will be considered in a future page: there are, however, other sources of its increase, by which the animal force of the individual is itself made to act with far greater than its unassisted power; and to these we shall at present confine our observations.

The construction of palaces, of temples, and of tombs, seems to have occupied the earliest attention of nations just entering on the career of civilization; and the enormous blocks of stone moved from their native repositories to minister to the grandeur or piety of the builders, have remained to excite the astonishment of their posterity, long after the purposes of many of these records, as well as the names of their founders, have been forgotten. The different