Another of these New Zealanders, and he was a very shrewd and intelligent person, carried back to his country a small hand-mill for grinding corn, which he prized as the greatest of all earthly possessions. And well might he prize it! He had no machine for converting corn into meal, but two stones, such as were used in the remote parts of the highlands of Scotland some years ago. And to beat the grain into meal by these two stones (a machine, remember, however imperfect) would occupy the labour of one-fourth of his family, to procure subsistence for the other three-fourths. The ancient Greeks, three thousand years ago, had improved upon the machinery of the hand-stones, for they had hand-mills. But Homer, the old Greek poet, describes the unhappy condition of the slave who was always employed in using this mill. The groans of the slave were unheeded by those who consumed the produce of his labour; and such was the necessity for meal, that the women were compelled to turn these mills when there were not slaves enough taken in war to perform this irksome office. There was plenty of labour then to be performed, even with the machinery of the hand-mill; but the slaves and the women did not consider that labour was a good in itself, and therefore they bitterly groaned under it. By and bye the understandings of men found out that water and wind would do the same work that the slaves and the women had done; and that a large quantity of labour was at liberty to be employed for other purposes. Does any one ask if society was in a worse state in consequence? We answer, labour is worth nothing without results. Its value is only to be measured by what it produces. If, in a country where hand-mills could be had, the people were to go on beating grain between two stones, all would pronounce them fools, because they could obtain an equal quantity of meal with a much less expenditure of labour. Some have a general prejudice against that sort of machinery which does its work with very little human assistance; it is not quite so certain, therefore, that they would agree that a people would be equal fools to use the hand-mill when they could employ the wind-mill or the water-mill. But we believe they would think that, if flour could drop from heaven, or be had like water by whoever chose to seek it, it would be the height of folly to have stones, or hand-mills, or water-mills, or wind-mills, or any machine whatever for manufacturing flour. Does any one ever think of _manufacturing_ water? The cost of water is only the cost of the labour which brings it to the place in which it is consumed. Yet this admission overturns all objections against machinery. _We admit that it is desirable to obtain a thing with no labour at all; can we therefore doubt that it is desirable to obtain it with the least possible labour?_ The only difference between no labour and a little labour is the difference of the cost of production. And the only difference between