第689页 / 共2651页

The coarse manufacture probably was, in those ancient times,

carried on in England in the same manner as it always has been in

countries where arts and manufactures are in their infancy. It

was probably a household manufacture, in which every different

part of the work was occasionally performed by all the different

members of almost every private family, but so as to be their

work only when they had nothing else to do, and not to be the

principal business from which any of them derived the greater

part of their subsistence. The work which is performed in this

manner, it has already been observed, comes always much cheaper

to market than that which is the principal or sole fund of the

workman's subsistence.