A Practical Treatise on Gas-light / Exhibiting a Summary Description of the Apparatus and Machinery Best Calculated for Illuminating Streets, Houses, and Manufactories, with Carburetted Hydrogen, or Coal-Gas, with Remarks on the Utility, Safety, and General Nature of this new Branch of Civil Economy.

by Friedrich Christian Accum

The slowness with which improvements of every kind, make their way into common use, and especially such discoveries as are most calculated to be of an extended or general utility is very remarkable, and forms a striking contrast to the extreme avidity with which those unmeaning changes are adopted, which folly and caprice are continually sending forth into the world under the auspices of fashion.

On the first view of the subject it appears very extraordinary, that any person should neglect, or refuse to avail himself of a proposed invention, or improvement, which is evidently calculated to economise his labour, and to encrease his comforts; but when we reflect on the power of habit, and consider how difficult it is for a person even to perceive the disadvantages or imperfections of former modes to which he has been accustomed from his early youth, our surprize will be diminished, or vanish altogether.

Many other circumstances, besides prejudice, are unfavourable to the introduction of new and useful discoveries. Among these jealousy, malice, envy, and revenge, have too often their share in obstructing the progress of real improvement, and in preventing the adoption of plans evidently calculated to promote the public good.

A plan like the present, which proposes not only to trench upon domestic habits, but to give an entire new direction to a portion of the skill and capital of the country, must necessarily encounter the most strenuous opposition. It is thus that some individuals have mustered all their strength against the introduction of this new art. An endeavour has been made to move the public opinion by dismal forebodings of the Greenland trade, and the subsequent loss of a nursery of British seamen. This objection is nothing more than the common clamour that is always set up against every new means of abridging labour, to which had the public listened, an interdict would have been laid upon the spinning and threshing machines, the steam engine, and a thousand other improvements in machinery.

Indeed such clamour scarcely ever fails to be made when the extension of machinery and the abridgement of labour or the application of inanimate powers are considered. On such occasions, it is stated by certain humane but mistaken objectors, that the scheme of mechanical and chemical improvement is pointed against the human species—that it tends to drive them out of the system of beneficial employment—that the introduction of machinery is injurious to the labouring class of society, by abridging their work. Two creatures offer themselves for employment and support—a man and a horse. I must invariably prefer the latter, and leave the former to starve. Two other beings—a horse and a steam-engine, are candidates for my favour. My preference to the latter tends to exterminate the species of the former. In both cases it is stated, that the number of intelligent creatures capable of the enjoyment of happiness must be diminished for want of support; and that, on the whole, the sum of the proposed improvement is not only a less proportion of good to society, but a positive accession of misery to the unemployed poor.

On this wide and extended argument, which can in fact be maintained against all improvements whatever in no other way than by insisting that the savage state of man, with all its wants, its ignorance, its ferocity, and its privations, is preferable to the social intercourse of effort and division of labour we are habituated to prefer, it may be sufficient to observe that it includes matter not only for reasoning and induction, but also for experiment. By reference to the matter of fact, though it must be allowed that new improvements, which change the habits of the poor, must at first expose them to a temporary inconvenience and distress, against which, in fairness, it is the duty of society to defend them; yet the invariable result of such improvements is always to better the condition of mankind. A temporary inconvenience to individuals must often be incurred for the sake of general national benefit.

It is to manufactories carried on by machinery and to the abridgment of labour, that this country is indebted for her riches, her independence and pre-eminent station among the nations of the world.

But let us return to the subject.—The progress of the new mode of lighting with coal-gas can never wholly supersede the use of candles and moveable lights. The objection with regard to the Greenland trade is equally futile. This traffic, might with more propriety be called a drain, than a nursery, of the naval force. The nature of the Greenland service requires that the crew should consist chiefly of able-bodied sailors; and being protected men, not subject to the impress law, they are thus rendered useless for national defence. The nursery of British seamen is the coasting trade; and if the gas-light illumination be put in practice to a large extent, it will increase that trade as much as it will diminish the Greenland fishery.

Even on the extreme supposition that it would annihilate the Greenland fisheries altogether, we should have no reason to regret the event. The soundest principles of political economy must condemn the practice of fitting out vessels to navigate the polar seas for oil, if we can extract a superior material for procuring light at a cheaper rate from the produce of our own soil.