[Plate I.] facing the title; [plate II.] facing page 79; [plate III.] facing page 115; [plate IV.] facing page 119; [plate V.] facing page 120; and [plates VI.] and [VII.] at the end of the book.
A
PRACTICAL TREATISE
ON
GAS-LIGHT.
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATION.
INFLUENCE
OF
THE PROGRESS OF THE ARTS
UPON THE
MORALS AND CONDITION OF MAN.
It is an undoubted truth, that the successive improvements in the condition of man, from a state of ignorance and barbarism, to that of the highest cultivation and refinement, are usually effected by the aid of machinery and expedients, calculated to procure the necessaries, the comforts, and the elegancies of life; and that the pre-eminence of any people in civilization is, and ought ever to be, estimated by the proportional state of industry, and useful labour existing among them.
In proof of this great and striking truth, no other argument requires to be offered, than an immediate reference to the experience of all ages and places: the various nations of the earth, the provinces of each nation, the towns, and even the villages of the same province, differ from each other in their accommodations; and are in every respect more flourishing, the greater their activity in establishing new channels of useful employ, calculated to procure the necessaries and comforts of life. Hence the nations which have shewn the most ingenuity in this way, are not only the richest, but also the most populous and the best defended: the provinces of those nations, are seen to flourish likewise in proportion to their respective degrees of activity in this respect, And from these exertions it is, as Smith[1] emphatically remarks, that “the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.”