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provement of the man will improve all that the man produces. Why is it, Sir, that the Hindoo cotton manufacturer, close to whose door the cotton grows, cannot, in a bazaar of his own town, maintain a competition with the English cotton manufacturer, who has to send thousands of miles for the raw material, and who has then to send the wrought material thousands of miles to market? You will say that it is owing to the excellence of our machinery. And to what is the excellence of our machinery owing? How many of the improvements which have been made in our machinery do we owe to the ingenuity and patient thought of working men? Adam Smith tells us in the first chapter of his great work, that you can hardly go to a factory without seeing some very pretty machine, that is his expression, devised by some laboring man. Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning jenny, was a common artisan. Crompton, the inventor of the mule jenny, was a working man. How many hours of the labor of children would do so much for our manufactures as one of these improvements has done? And in what sort of society are such improvements most likely to be made? Surely in a society in which the faculties of the working people are developed by education. How long will you wait before any negro, working under the lash in Louisiana, will contrive a better machinery for squeezing the sugar canes? My honorable friend seems to me, in all his reasonings about the commercial prosperity of nations, to overlook entirely the chief cause on which that prosperity depends. What is it, Sir, that makes the great difference between country and country? Not the exuberance of soil; not the mildness of climate; not mines, nor havens, nor rivers. These things are indeed valuable when put to their proper uses by human intelligence but human intelligence can do much without them; and they without human intelligence can do nothing.

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They exist in the highest degree in regions of which the inhabitants are few, and squalid, and barbarous, and naked, and starving; while on sterile rocks, amidst unwholesome marshes, and under inclement skies, may be found immense populations, well fed, well lodged, well clad, well governed. Nature meant Egypt and Sicily to be gardens of the world. They once were so. Is it anything in the earth or the air that makes Scotland more prosperous than Egypt, that makes Holland more prosperous than Sicily? No; it was the Scotchman that made Scotland; it was the Dutchman that made Holland. Look at North America. Two centuries ago the sites on which now arise mills, and hotels, and banks, and colleges, and churches, and the Senate Houses, of flourishing commonwealths, were deserts abandoned to the panther and the bear. What has made the change? Was it the rich mold, or the redundant rivers? No; the prairies were as fertile, the Ohio and the Hudson were as broad and as full then as now. Was the improvement the effect of some great transfer of capital from the old world to the new? No; the emigrants generally carried out with them no more than a pittance; but they carried out the English heart, and head, and arm; and the English heart and head and arm turned the wilderness into cornfield and orchard, and the huge trees of the primeval forest into cities and fleets. Man, man is the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling, when compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men of bodily and mental vigor, and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labor one day in seven. That is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plow lies in the furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends

from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labors on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporeal vigor. Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger, and healthier, and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it poorer. You try to frighten us by telling us that in some German factories, the young work seventeen hours in the twenty-four, that they work so hard that among thousands there is not one who grows to such a stature that he can be admitted into the army; and you ask whether, if we pass this bill, we can possibly hold our own against such competition as this? Sir, I laugh at the thought of such competition. If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it, not to a race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people preeminently vigorous in body and in mind.

- MACAULAY: Speech on the Ten Hours Bill.

CHAPTER V.

WORDS.

Choice of Expression.

43. The English language has a much larger stock of words than any other language ever used by man. Often a given idea will be represented quite accurately in English by either of two words; sometimes by any one of three. Thus we speak of a certain class of our population as the poor, the needy, the indigent, meaning the same thing no matter which one of the three words we use; we speak of a laboring man's pay, wages, earnings; of the meaning, sense, signification of a passage of Scripture; of a fitting, proper, appropriate exercise ; something hinders, delays, retards us; we become tired, weary, fatigued. One needs a stock of equivalent words of this kind for the sake of variety.

Other sets of words in English represent the same idea, but with different degrees of intensity. Thus empty, vain, futile hopes; sameness, uniformity, monotony; an unwise, inconsiderate, silly, foolish, absurd, ridiculous statement; to like, admire, love; wealth, riches, opulence; to discountenance, deprecate, deplore, lament, bewail an act; vexed, provoked, indignant, angry; it is not impossible, it is possible, it is not unlikely, it is likely, it is not improbable, it is probable, it is certain. We need

to learn to distinguish degrees of meaning in words, so as not to overstate or understate ourselves. When a familiar word does not quite satisfy us, does not adequately or exactly express our meaning, we may be sure that there is another more fitting; and here a book of synonyms or the dictionary will help us.

Other sets of words represent the same idea in different applications. Thus while the words forgive, pardon, condone, excuse, acquit, absolve, remit, overlook, pass over, represent the same idea, each has its particular application, as will be seen by consulting the dictionary. So with house, residence, habitation, mansion; wages, salary, fee, stipend; fright, scare, panic; dread, dismay, consternation; guess, think, suppose; meeting, assembly, audience, congregation; choose, prefer, select; hanged, hung ; allude, refer; healthy, healthful, wholesome; less, fewer; two, a couple, a pair; company, gathering, crew, gang, band, party; avow, acknowledge, confess; only, alone.

How to enlarge your Vocabulary.

44. One may enlarge one's stock of words by looking up the new words one reads, by trying to think of equivalent expressions for them, and by recalling and using them as they may be needed in one's own writing and speaking. We should try to make use of all of our language resources; but it should be with a knowledge of the meaning, applications, and implications of the words

we use.

Some words have formed close associations with other words. Thus, take steps, contract habits, pursue a course, turn to account, bear malice, pass over in silence, win