I now show you two thumb latches, one of American and one of English make. Notice the general finish of the American latch; the shape, the mode of construction, and everything about it proves that brains were used when it was designed and made. The English "Norfolk latch," on the other hand, is ill designed, uncomfortable in hand, clumsily finished, the japan hangs about it in lumps, the latch is clumsy, the catch is clumsier, and the keeper, a rough piece of hoop iron, seems as if designed to "keep" the latch from doing its duty. In this case the American latch is 25 per cent cheaper than the English one; and the English latch is of the same pattern as the one that was in use when I was a boy, only that it is a greatly inferior article.

I will now introduce you to the well known nuisance which we have been accustomed to use for fastening our cupboard doors - the cupboard turn - and without further comment, ask you to compare it with this neat and simple latch of American make, costing about 5 per cent more, twice as efficacious, and five times as durable. In this case no improvement has been made in the English fastener. It is just as it was when I went to the trade, about 28 years ago, and although many attempts have been made to improve it they have added so much to its cost as to prevent the improved articles from coming into general use.

The difference between the English and American inventor and designer seems to consist in this - that while an Englishman devotes all his energies to the improvement of an existing shape, the American throws the old article under his bench and commencesde novo.

I think I have made out a case against the English hardware manufacturer, but when I have pointed these matters out to merchants and ironmongers, I have been met with various reasons for this manifest inferiority. I do not know how far these excuses may be valid, but one man says that the reason, as regards locks, is somewhat as follows: The locksmiths of the district wherein they are made in many cases work at their own homes; one man making one part of a lock, while other men make other parts. This goes on generation after generation, and the men become mere machines, not knowing how the entire lock is constructed, and not caring to know. Another attributes it to the influence of the trades-unions, and says that if a manufacturer wants a different kind of lock, the price for the work is immediately put higher, even though the actual labor may not be increased. A third says it is due to the drunkenness of the hands, and their consequent poverty and physical and social demoralization, which prevents them from rising to such an intellectual level as will enable them to see the evils of their system, and adopt the right means to remove them. A fourth boldly says, "We make these goods because our customers want them." How far the reasons assigned by the first three are correct I am unable to say, but for the fourth, the extent to which the builders of England have patronized the Americans is a complete answer.

This defense, "Our customers want them," is as old as the hills, and has been used to cover every kind of deception and inferior article ever manufactured. Our Lancashire manufacturers use it when they are charged with sending china clay and mildew (and call it calico) for the mild Hindoo and the Heathen Chinee to dress themselves in. Our butter merchants use it when they make up grease and call it butter; and our hardware merchants use it when they send us sham locks, and call them brass bushed, etc.

It is the duty of the manufacturer to invent for his customers, and it is preposterous to say that the builder would prefer that embodiment of fraud - the English rim-lock, which I showed to you - to the American lock, which, at any rate, was an honest article, especially when the latter had the great advantage of being considerably cheaper. I am afraid that the swindling and greed of our merchants is having the effect of thrusting us out of the markets of the world, including our home markets; and when it is too late, these men who are making the name of English goods a byword and a reproach, even among the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the untutored savages of the South Sea Islands, will find that "honesty is the best policy."

We have been accustomed to hear a deal of buncombe talked about the honesty of the Englishman, and the want of honesty of the Yankee; about the enterprise of our manufacturers and the skill of our workmen; but if what I have shown to you is to be taken as a specimen, it is time we set our house in order. Since commencing the paper I have read the discussion between Messrs. Chubb and Hill, and am at a loss to know why Messrs. Chubb entered into the arena. If all the English makers tried to reach Chubb's standard we should keep our markets, at least so far as high quality is concerned; and to see Messrs. Chubb acting as champions of the English lockmakers is something like seeing Messrs. Horrocks taking up the cudgels for those people who manufacture china clay and call it calico, the proportion of fiber in the material being just a little greater than that found in hair mortar.

In conclusion, I wish it to be understood that I bring these facts before you in no exultant spirit. I am an Englishman, and the future welfare of myself and my children depends very much upon the future of English manufactures; but we cannot be blind to the fact that the apathy and conservatism of our manufacturers, the greed of our Merchants, and the ignorance and drunkenness of our workmen, are weighing us so heavily in the race for trade that a member of our own family, whose leading business should be to produce food for us, is outstripping us with the greatest ease. Our boasted supremacy as a manufacturing people is leaving us, and leaving us under such humiliating circumstances - and if the men of Birmingham and the district are content to dwell in their present "fools' paradise," it is the duty of every lover of his country to speak as plainly as possible to them.

Of course I am prepared to be told that as I am not a lockmaker my opinion is worthless; but I have been about 28 years as man and boy, employer and workman, in the building trade, and if I have not got to know something about builders' hardware during that period, I have made but a poor use of my time. I do not know if I have added to your stock of knowledge, but deeming the subject an important one, I have done the best I could in the time at my disposal.

In the discussion which followed the opinion of the members present was unanimously in favor of the American articles shown to them.

A high Indian official reports that the people of Cashmere are dying of famine like flies, and at the present rate of mortality the province will be nearly depopulated by the end of the year.