will overcome the elements, and will make light of calms, contrary winds, and even storms. Transport will become much more rapid, the time of the arrival of the steam-vessel will be as regular as that of our public coaches; and we shall no longer have occasion to remain on the coast for weeks, or even months, the heart a prey to cruel anxiety, watching, with anxious eye on the distant horizon, for the uncertain traces of the vessel which is to restore to us a father or a mother, a brother or a friend. In fine, the steam-engine, conveying in its train thousands of travellers, will run, upon railroads, more swiftly than the best race-horse, loaded only with its diminutive jockey.

This, gentlemen, is a very abridged sketch of the benefits bequeathed to the world by the machine of which Papin supplied the germ in his writings, and which, after so many ingenious exertions, Watt carried to such admirable perfection. Posterity will assuredly not degrade them to the level of other labours which have been too much commended, and whose real influence, weighed by the tribunal of reason, will for ever remain circumscribed within the confined circle of a few individuals and a limited space of time.

We have long been in the habit of talking of the age of Augustus, and of the age of Louis XIV. Eminent individuals amongst us have likewise held that we might with propriety speak of the age of Voltaire, of Rousseau, and of Montesquieu. I do not hesitate to declare my conviction, that, when the immense services already rendered by the steam-engine shall be added to all the marvels it holds out to promise, a grateful population will then familiarly talk of the ages of Papin and of Watt!

A biography of Watt, intended to form a part of our collection of memoirs, would certainly be incomplete, did it not contain an enumeration of the academic titles with which the illustrious engineer was invested. The list will, moreover, occupy but a few lines. Watt became a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in the year 1783; of the Royal Society of London in 1785; of the Batavian Society in 1787; a correspondent of the Institute in the year 1808; and in 1814, L'Academie des Sciences of the Institute, conferred upon Watt the highest honour it can bestow, by naming him one of its eight foreign associates. By a spontaneous and unanimous vote the Senate of the University of Glasgow conferred on Watt, in the year 1806, the honorary degree of LL.D.

G

ON MACHINERY

CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE

PROSPERITY OF THE WORKING CLASSES.*

BY M. ARAGO.

Many individuals, without questioning the genius of Watt, regard the improvements on account of which the world is his debtor, and the great impulse they have given to the labours of

* In writing the following chapter, I thought that I might avail myself without scruple of the numerous documents I have collected, whether in my occasional intercourse with my illustrious friend Lord Brougham, or in those works which his Lordship has published, or which have appeared under his patronage. Were I to believe the criticisms which various persons have published since the reading of this eloge, I have, in endeavouring to combat the opinion that Machinery is injurious to the working classes, been attacking a worn out prejudice which has no longer any real existence. Could I believe this to be the case, I would willingly suppress all my reasonings, good or bad. But unfortunately, the letters which worthy workmen frequently address to me, whether as Academician or Deputy, and still more the dissertations ex professo, and quite recent, of several political economists, leave me no doubt as to the necessity of affirming now, and of repeating upon every becoming occasion, that machinery has never been the real cause of the sufferings of one of the most numerous and interesting classes of society; that its destruction would only aggravate suffering; and that it is not in this quarter we shall find the remedy for evils, which I regret from the bottom of my heart.

industry, as a social calamity.

Were we to believe them, the adoption of every new machine inevitably increases the inconveniences, and adds to the miseries of our artisans. All those wonderful mechanical combinations which we are in the custom of admiring for the regularity and harmony of their movements, and for the energy and delicacy of their effects, are, in their opinion, only instruments of evil, which the legislator ought to proscribe with a just and implacable severity.

Conscientious opinions, and especially when associated with feelings of philanthropy, should ever have a claim to attentive examination. Nay, I will add, that from me such an examination is an imperative duty. I should, in fact, neglect that aspect of the labours of our illustrious associate which is most worthy of public admiration, were I not, far from subscribing to the criticisms of prejudice, to hold up such labours to the attention of men of property, as the means the most powerful, the most direct, and the most efficacious for relieving the operatives of their hardest sufferings, and for making them participate in all the blessings which appeared to be the peculiar inheritance of the rich.

When we have to make a choice between two propositions which are diametrically opposed to each other-when the one being true, the other must necessarily be false, and when nothing, at the first glance, seems to indicate a rational choice between them, geometricians are in the habit of taking up these contrary propositions, of following them out minutely through their several ramifications, and so arriving at their ultimate logical results; and the proposition which is incorrect, and it alone, seldom fails by this process to lead to consequences which a correctly constituted mind cannot admit. Let us employ for a moment this method of examination, of