In that case I have made a false reckoning, though I know neither where nor when I got astray.

I should commit the crime of treason to humanity if I should introduce my error into the legislation of my country." Or else--"The discoveries of the mind limit the work of the arms, as some particular facts seem to indicate; for I see daily a machine do the labor of from twenty to a hundred workmen, and thus I am forced to prove a flagrant, eternal, incurable antithesis between the intellectual and physical ability of man; between his progress and his comfort; and I cannot forbear saying that the Creator of man ought to have given him either reason or arms, moral force, or brutal force, but that he has played with him in conferring upon him opposing faculties which destroy one another." The difficulty is pressing.

Do you know how they get rid of it?
By this singular apothegm: "In political economy there are no absolute principles." In intelligible and vulgar language, that means: "I do not know where is the true nor the false; I am ignorant of what constitutes general good or evil; I give myself no trouble about it.

The only law which I consent to recognize, is the immediate effect of each measure upon my personal comfort." No absolute principles! You might as well say, there are no absolute facts; for principles are only the summing up of well proven facts.
Machines, importations, have certainly consequences.

These consequences are good or bad.