When a boy has got hold of what we call the rudiments of learning, he has possessed himself of the most useful tools and machines which exist in the world. He has obtained the means of doing that with extreme ease, which, without these tools, is done only with extreme labour. He has earned the time which, if rightly employed, will elevate his mind, and therefore improve his condition. Just so is it with all tools and machines for diminishing bodily exertion. They give us the means of doing that with comparative ease, which, without them, can only be done with extreme drudgery. They set at liberty a great quantity of mere animal power, which, having then leisure to unite with mental power, produces ingenious and skilful workmen in every trade. But they do more than this. They diminish human suffering--they improve the health--they increase the term of life--they render all occupations less painful and laborious;--and, by doing all this, they elevate man in the scale of existence. A late Pasha of Egypt, in one of those fits of caprice which it is the nature of tyrants to exhibit, ordered, a few years ago, that the male population of a district should be set to clear out one of the ancient canals which was then filled up with mud. The people had no tools, and the Pasha gave them no tools; but the work was required to be done. So to work the poor wretches went, to the number of fifty thousand. They had to plunge up to their necks in the filthiest slime, and to bale it out with their hands, and their hands alone. They were fed, it is true, during the operation; but their food was of a quality proportioned to the little _profitable_ labour which they performed. They were fed on horse-beans and water. In the course of one year, more than thirty thousand of these unhappy people perished. If the tyrant, instead of giving labour to fifty thousand people, had possessed the means of setting up steam-engines to pump out the water, and scoop out the mud,--or if he had provided the pump, which is called Archimedes' screw, and was invented by that philosopher for the very purpose of draining land in Egypt,--or if the people had even had scoops and shovels, instead of being degraded like beasts, to the employment of their unassisted hands,--the work might have been done at a fiftieth of the cost, even of the miserable pittance of horse-beans and water; and the money that was saved by the tools and machines, might have gone to furnish _profitable_ labour to the thousands who perished amidst the misery and degradation of their _unprofitable_ labour.