brings them together, as to an oracle of wisdom. _Machinery._--The benefit derived from machinery needs no explanation. The more simple order of machines, or instruments--as the plough, the axe, and the spindle--have never been otherwise considered than as precious gifts to human industry; and the more complicated machines, which have been invented in modern times, have no sooner established themselves, so to speak, in society--have no sooner, at the expense of some temporary evils, secured themselves a quiet recognised position--than they, too, have been welcomed in the same character as signal aids to human industry. But while the machine has added immensely to the products of labour, it has done nothing to diminish the class of manual labours. It has done nothing, nor does it seem probable that it will ever effect anything, towards rendering that class less requisite or less numerous. On the contrary, it has always, hitherto, multiplied that class. The machine will not go of itself, will not manufacture itself, nor keep itself in repair. The human labourer becomes the slave of the machine. He created it for his service, and it serves him, but on condition only that he binds himself to a reciprocal bondage. You spin by a steam-engine, and some complicated system of reels and pulleys, but the human finger is not spared--the human volition is still wanted. To manufacture this machine, to tend it, to govern it--in short, to use it--far more manual labour is called into requisition than ever turned the simple spinning-wheel, or teased the flax from the distaff. You have more garments woven, but the better clad are not exactly those who weave them. The machine has called into existence, for its own service, an immense population, ill fed and ill clothed. Our pyramid is extending at the basis: as it rises higher it is growing broader. _Money--Capital._--We class these together because they are intimately connected. Capital is not money, but there would have been little accumulation of capital but for the use of money. The youthful student of political economy meets with no chapter in his books of science so amusing, and so thoroughly convincing, as that which shows him the utility of money, and the reasons which have led almost all nations to prefer the precious metals for their instruments of exchange. Without some such instrument, what is to be done? A man has made a hat, and wants a pound of butter. He cannot divide his hat: what would be half a hat? Besides, the man who has the butter does not want the hat. But the precious metals come in marvellously to his aid. They are divisible into the smallest portions; they are durable, will not spoil by keeping; they are of steady value, and will not much depreciate: if the man of butter does not want them, he can always find somebody that does; no fear but that they will easily pass from hand to hand, as each one wishes to barter them for whatever he may want.