encourage beginners in these industrious pursuits, to pay them at
a very high rate for the little work they were able to perform;
but every body knows that no manufacture can possibly subsist
long, where exorbitant prices are paid for labour; and it is easy
to conceive what discontent and disgust would be occasioned among
the workmen upon lowering the prices which had for a length of
time been given for labour, By employing the poor people in
question at first in the manufactures of hemp and flax,
manufactures which were not intended to be carried on to any
extent, it was easy afterwards, when they had acquired a certain
degree of address in their work, to take them from these
manufactures, and put them to spinning of wool, worsted, or
cotton; care having been taken to fix the price of labour in
these last-mentioned manufactures at a reasonable rate.

The dropping the manufacture of any particular article altogether,
or pursuing it less extensively, could produce no bad effect upon
the general establishment; but the lowering of the price of labour,
in any instance, could not fail to produce many.

It is necessary, in an undertaking like this, cautiously to avoid
every thing that could produce discouragement and discontent
among those upon whose industry alone success must depend.

It is easy to conceive that so great a number of unfortunate
beings, of all ages and sexes, taken as it were out of their very
element, and placed in a situation so perfectly new to them,
could not fail to be productive of very interesting situations.
Would to God I were able to do justice to this subject! but no
language can describe the affecting scenes to which I was a