for each postman, its affairs could not be managed so cheaply and expeditiously as they are at present.

In moving to a new employment a listlessness and sauntering intervene; neither the mind nor muscles readily apply to the new work, and this repugnance can only be overcome after a certain period of resolute application. Practice not only gives greater aptitude and flexibility to particular parts, but strength, and enables them to execute more work with greater ease than could be otherwise effected. A novelist or poet, for instance, will not master an abstruse subject with the same facility as a mathematician, whose mind is habituated to deep and continuous investigation. The physical effects are of a similar nature. The grasp of a blacksmith's hand is well known to be like his own vice, and a porter or coal-heaver acquires an amplitude of shoulder by his employment, which is rarely found in those accus tomed only to sketch the tendon Achilles in Hydepark or the Quadrant.*

* The observations in this paragraph require qualification. They apply, I apprehend, chiefly to mechanical labour, or to labour that must be executed within certain hours, or in a certain place. Both body and mind are relieved by change of pursuit, and business, by the alternation of employment, may be made to answer all the purposes of recreation. In this way a Charlemagne, a Napoleon, a Brougham, and other public charácters, have been enabled to accomplish such prodigies of labour. It is refreshing to pass from the stillness and monotony of a bureau to the bustle and variety of a review, an audience, or court of law. A London merchant will spend the morning at desk, midday on 'Change, then dine, and return in the evening with unabated vigour to posting his books, answering

By dividing, and thereby simplifying occupations, less time is requisite to acquire a knowledge of them. A lad will much sooner learn to head a pin or point a needle than to make either of these tools entire. Long apprenticeships were intended to indemnify masters for the time lost in teaching boys successive and complicated processes; but, in an advanced state of society, when employments have been simplified by division, there is not the same reason for the protracted term of seven or five years' servitude.

2. Greater dexterity and skill are acquired by the constant repetition of one single process or opera

tion.

This is only affirming the old saying that "practice makes perfect;" or that "a Jack of all trades is master of none." A workman in the daily practice of one simple business, acquires a dexterity and despatch which would not be possible were he more variously occupied. Not only is the play of the muscles improved, but each sense and faculty, by concentration of object. A banker's clerk will count over a buncorrespondents, or concocting a new bargain or speculation. Could a mechanic labour so many hours without bringing on the disease of his trade, occasioned by the constant application of one set of muscles or faculty of the mind? If the object sought be to render an operative a machine, whereby the greatest quantity of work in a given occupation may be extracted from him, no way so effective as division of labour. This is, in fact, the only point assumed to be investigated in the text. Political economy does not embrace moral but physical results. And after all, an employment reduced to its minimum of simplicity must leave the mind at leisure for reflection and conversation; and these are the effects known to be produced in many manufactories.

dle of notes with ten times the rapidity of another person not used to the employment. Mr. Babbage mentions a clerk of the Bank of England who, upon an emergency, signed his name, consisting of eleven letters, to 5300 notes, during eleven working-hours, and he also arranged the notes he had signed in parcels of fifty each. This affords some idea how the power of execution is increased by the practice of an employment, and its effects on production, especially in piece-work, must be very great. In nailmaking, Adam Smith states, a boy brought up to the trade will make upwards of 2300 nails in a day, whilst a common smith, who, though accustomed to handle the hammer, has never been used to make nails, would not be able to make above two or three hundred in a day, and "these, too, very bad ones."

3. The division of employment suggests the contrivance of tools, machinery, and processes for abridging and saving labour.

An operative, whose attention is limited to one simple process, is more likely to hit upon a contrivance for facilitating the execution of it than if he were distracted by a greater variety of circumstances. The simplicity of his employment leaving the mind disengaged, a new tool, or better mode of using an old one, is more likely to occur to him than if he were more intensely occupied. His object, [however, would be chiefly to save his own labour, as in the case mentioned by Smith. In the first steamengines, a lad was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the

boiler and cylinder, according as the piston ascended or descended. One of the boys so employed observed, that by tying a string from the handle of the valve which opened the communication to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut of itself, leaving him at liberty to play with his companions. Similar causes have probably originated many of our great mechanical combinations. The workman finds out a tool for saving his labour; while minds of greater leisure and grasp step in and combine these tools into a machine impelled by one moving power, and thus effect those miracles of ingenuity and force that are exhibited in our mills and factories.

4. The series of operations necessary to the production of an article do not require a uniform amount of skill and force; by the division of employments, the master is enabled to apply exactly that degree of skill and force to each operation which is necessary to its execution, whereby the cost of production is lessened.

This advantage of the division of labour appears to have been first communicated to the English public in the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures; though Mr. Babbage admits the same principle had been distinctly stated by Gioja, an Italian, author of an economical work, published at Milan, in 1815. Its tendency to economise labour might be shown in almost every branch of industry; and Mr. Babbage has elucidated it with great minuteness in explaining the several processes used in the making of pins.

As the Professor's interesting publication is in general circulation it is unnecessary to repeat his description of the successive operations in this curious art; it will be sufficient to recapitulate the results.

To make 5546 pins, weighing one pound, occupies four men, four women, and two children, rather more than seven hours and a half of time, and the total expense of their labour, each being paid according to his skill and the time he is employed, amounts to nearly 1s. ld. The ratio of the wages earned per day by the persons so employed, varies from 4d., the sum paid to the boy who assists in twisting and cutting the heads, to 6s., the sum paid to the man who finishes the most difficult part of the art. Of the seven hours and a half consumed, four are taken up by a woman in heading; rather more than two hours by another woman in preparing, and the remaining hour and a half is spent by the other eight persons in drawing the wire, straightening the wire, pointing and tinning. Now it is obvious that if only one person was employed to make a pin, from the beginning to the end, he must not only have the skill and the strength necessary to execute the more easy and simple processes, but those more difficult and laborious. It follows that one half of his time would be spent in putting on the heads-a part of the work only worth 1s. 3d. a day; while his skill, if better employed, would in the same time produce five times as much. Pins in consequence would be nearly four times the current price; and the reason of their cheapness is a skilful division of labour, an