These effects must be either good or bad.

Here there may be a difference of opinion as to which is the correct conclusion, but whichever is adopted, it must be capable of being submitted to the formula of one or other of these principles, viz.: Machinery is a good, or, Machinery is an evil.
Importations are beneficial, or, Importations are injurious.

Bat to say _there are no principles_, is certainly the last degree of debasement to which the human mind can lower itself, and I confess that I blush for my country, when I hear so monstrous an absurdity uttered before, and approved by, the French Chambers, the _elite_ of the nation, who thus justify themselves for imposing upon the country laws, of the merits or demerits of which they are perfectly ignorant.
But, it may be said to me, finish, then, by destroying the _Sophism_.
Prove to us that machines are not injurious to _human labor_, nor importations to _national labor_.
In a work of this nature, such demonstrations cannot be very complete.
My aim is rather to point out than to explain difficulties, and to excite reflection rather than to satisfy it.

The mind never attains to a firm conviction which is not wrought out by its own labor.

I will, however, make an effort to put it upon the right track.
The adversaries of importations and of machinery are misled by allowing themselves to form too hasty a judgment from immediate and transitory effects, instead of following these up to their general and final consequences.
The immediate effect of an ingenious piece of machinery, is, that it renders superfluous, in the production of any given result, a certain quantity of manual labor.