Let those who doubt the respectability of labour, consider for one moment what years of thought, and study, and patience, are involved in even the commonest industrial process. “A man would be laughed at,” says Mandeville, in his “Fable of the Bees,” “that should discover luxury in the plain dress of the pauper, in the thick parish coat, and coarse workhouse shirt beneath it. And yet what a number of people, how many different trades, and what a variety of skill and tools must be employed to have the most ordinary Yorkshire cloth! What depth of thought and ingenuity, and what length of time must it have cost, before man could have learned from a seed to raise and prepare so useful a product as linen! Must not that society be vainly curious among whom this admirable commodity, after it is made, shall not be thought fit to be used _even by the poorest of all_, before it is brought to a perfect whiteness, which is not to be done but with the assistance of great chemical knowledge, joined to a world of industry and patience? Can we reflect,” he continues, “not only on the cost laid out in this luxurious invention, but likewise on the little time the whiteness of it endures (in which great part of its beauty consists), so that at every six or seven days, at farthest, it wants cleaning, and is, consequently, while it lasts, a continual charge to the wearer—can we, I say, reflect on all this, and not think it an extravagant piece of nicety, that those who receive alms of the parish should not only have whole garments made of this operose manufacture, but likewise, that as soon as they are soiled, we should make use of, in order to restore them to their original purity, one of the most judicious, as well as difficult compositions that chemistry can boast—a composition with which, when dissolved in water, by the help of fire, the most detersive and yet innocent lixivium is prepared, that human industry or ingenuity has been able to invent?”