This page needs to be proofread.
44 Manual of Political Economy. BOOK I. CH. IV.
fication for the off-hand way in which this opposition is often spoken of as irrational and unfounded. The reality of the loss which has to be borne by the labourers ought at once to be admitted; and as the loss is brought upon them by no fault of their own, the public ought at any rate to extend to them a kindly sympathy; sometimes the labourers might be induced, if calmly reasoned with, to relinquish a useless opposition to machinery: they not unfrequently increase the loss inflicted on them through the introduction of machinery by entering into a fruitless and costly struggle to resist its use. Probably the best way for the workmen to meet such a misfortune as that just described is to endeavour to find some other branch of industry, in which the kind of skill which they possess could be made to some extent available. The hand-loom weavers of Spitalfields, instead of clinging to an industry which has been superseded, and thus gradually sinking into deeper and deeper distress, would have done far better if they had sought employment in the silk-mills in the north of England.