All About Engines

James Watt: The Man and his Work 55 only steam pumps, useful but limited in their appli- cation. England was, in every material respect, an agricultural country ; but, impelled by the driving force of the steam engine, she became, during the Napoleonic wars, the workshop of the world. And what has history to say on the importance of British manufactures in those days, when a series of wars drained the country of its wealth in men and money ? In 1750 the National Debt was only £78,000,000—not a large sum as we count national indebtedness to-day, but still large enough for those times. When the American War of Independence closed in 1784 the amount owing by the Government of this country was over £200,000,000. And in 1815 it had swollen to over £800,000,000. Before a coun- try can run heavily into debt two conditions must obtain. There must be confidence in her rulers—con- fidence that her statesmen will not repudiate a written obligation as a mere “ scrap of paper,” and confidence that the resources of the country and the industry and intelligence of the people will enable them to produce more than they require for sub- sistence, so that they can pay an accumulated debt out of the surplus. And it was the existence of these conditions which enabled the Government to mul- tiply the National Debt by four in thirty years, and by ten in a little over half a century. When Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers he thought only of our mercantile marine and of the commercial towns on the coast. His vision never extended to the Midlands and the North, where