Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/111

to heap up incense on the shrine of luxury, and accumulate expedients of selfish and ruinous profusion. Complicated machinery—behold its blessings. Twenty years ago, at the door of every cottage sate the good woman with her spinning-wheel: the children, if not more profitably employed than in gathering heath and sticks, at least laid in a stock of health and strength to sustain the labours of maturer years. Where is the spinning-wheel now, and every simple and insulated occupation of the industrious cottager? Wherever this boasted machinery is established, the children of the poor are death-doomed from their cradles. Look for one moment at midnight into a cotton-mill, amidst the smell of oil—the smoke of lamps—the rattling of wheels—the dizzy and complicated motions of diabolical mechanism—contemplate the little human machines that keep play with the revolutions