The object of the present volume is to point out the effects and the advantages which arise from the use of tools and machines;—to endeavour to classify their modes of action;—and to trace both the causes and the consequences of applying machinery to supersede the skill and power of the human arm.

A view of the mechanical part of the subject will, in the first instance, occupy our attention, and to this the first section of the work will be devoted. The first chapter of the section will contain some remarks on the general sources from whence the advantages of machinery are derived, and the succeeding nine chapters will contain a detailed examination of principles of a less general character. The eleventh chapter contains numerous subdivisions, and is important from the extensive classification it affords of the arts in which copying is so largely employed The twelfth chapter, which completes the first section, contains a few suggestions for the assistance of those who propose visiting manufactories.

The second section, after an introductory chapter on the difference between making and manufacturing, will contain, in the succeeding chapters, a discussion of many of the questions which relate to the political economy of the subject. It was found that the domestic arrangement, or interior economy of factories, was so interwoven with the more general questions, that it was deemed unadvisable to separate the two subjects. The concluding chapter of this section, and of the work itself, relates to the future prospects of manufactures, as arising from the application of science.