4s Benjamin Franklin [1760
gether, and settle in a foreign land. Some of the
idle and drunken may be enticed away; but these
only disappoint their employers, and serve to discourage
 the undertaking. If by royal munificence,
and an expense that the profits of the trade alone
would not bear, a complete set of good and skilful
hands are collected and carried over, they find so
much of the system imperfect, so many things wanting
 to carry on the trade to advantage, so many
difficulties to overcome, and the knot of hands so
easily broken by death, dissatisfaction, and desertion,
 that they and their employers are discouraged
together, and the project vanishes into smoke.
Hence it happens that established manufactures
are hardly ever lost, but by foreign conquest, or by
some eminent interior fault in manners or government—a
 bad police oppressing and discouraging the
workmen, or religious persecutions driving the sober
and industrious out of the country. There is, in
short, scarce a single instance in history of the contrary,
 where manufactures have once taken firm
root. They sometimes start up in a new place; but
are generally supported, like exotic plants, at more
expense than they are worth for any thing but
curiosity, until these new seats become the refuge
of the manufacturers driven from the old ones.
The conquest of Constantinople, and final reduction
 of the Greek empire, dispersed many curious
manufacturers into different parts of Christendom.
The former conquests of its provinces had before
done the same. The loss of liberty in Verona, Milan,
Florence, Pisa, Pistoia, and other great cities of

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