I'm not up to talking as
John Barton would have done, but that's clear to me at any rate."
"My good man, just listen to me. Two men live in solitude; one
produces loaves of bread, the other coats,--or what you will. Now,
would it not be hard if the bread-producer were forced to give bread
for the coats, whether he wanted them or not, in order to furnish
employment to the other? That is the simple form of the case;
you've only to multiply the numbers. There will come times of great
changes in the occupation of thousands, when improvements in
manufactures and machinery are made. It's all nonsense talking,--it
must be so!"
Job Legh pondered a few moments.
"It's true it was a sore time for the hand-loom weavers when
power-looms came in: them new-fangled things make a man's life
like a lottery; and yet I'll never misdoubt that power-looms and
railways, and all such-like inventions, are the gifts of God. I
have lived long enough, too, to see that it is a part of His plan to
send suffering to bring out a higher good; but surely it's also a
part of His plan that so much of the burden of the suffering as can
be should be lightened by those whom it is His pleasure to make
happy, and content in their own circumstances.
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