The truth, as well as the importance of this principle, is so
well established in the Report of a Committee of the House of
Commons 'On the Export of Tools and Machinery', that I shall
avail myself of the opinions and evidence there stated, before I
offer any observations of my own:
Supposing, indeed, that the same machinery which is used in
England could be obtained on the Continent, it is the opinion of
some of the most intelligent of the witnesses that a want of
arrangement in foreign manufactories, of division of labour in
their work, of skill and perseverance in their workmen, and of
enterprise in the masters, together with the comparatively low
estimation in which the master manufacturers are held on the
Continent, and with the comparative want of capital, and of many
other advantageous circumstances detailed in the evidence, would
prevent foreigners from interfering in any great degree by
competition with our principal manufacturers; on which subject
the Committee submit the following evidence as worthy the
attention of the House:
I would ask whether, upon the whole, you consider any danger
likely to arise to our manufactures from competition, even if the
French were supplied with machinery equally good and cheap as our
own? They will always be behind us until their general habits
approximate to ours; and they must be behind us for many reasons
that I have before given.
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