And if it be, on the contrary, proved, that machinery and manual labor coexist to a greater extent among rich nations than among savages, it must necessarily follow, that these two powers do not interfere with one another.
I cannot understand how a thinking being can rest satisfied with the following dilemma: Either the inventions of man do not injure labor; and this, from general facts, would appear to be the case, for there exists more of both among the English and the French, than among the Sioux and the Cherokees.

If such be the fact, I have gone upon a wrong track, although unconscious at what point.

I have wandered from my road, and I would commit high treason against humanity, were I to introduce such an error into the legislation of my country.
Or else the results of the inventions of mind limit manual labor, as would appear to be proved from limited facts; for every day we see some machine rendering unnecessary the labor of twenty, or perhaps a hundred workmen.

If this be the case, I am forced to acknowledge, as a fact, the existence of a flagrant, eternal, and incurable antagonism between the intellectual and the physical power of man; between his improvement and his welfare.

I cannot avoid feeling that the Creator should have bestowed upon man either reason or bodily strength; moral force, or brutal force; and that it has been a bitter mockery to confer upon him faculties which must inevitably counteract and destroy one another.
This is an important difficulty, and how is it put aside?
By this singular apothegm: "_In political economy there are no absolute principles._" There are no principles! Why, what does this mean, but that there are no facts?
Principles are only formulas, which recapitulate a whole class of well-proved facts.
Machinery and Importation must certainly have effects.