the law of unimaginable consequences

To Cragg tonight to watch a play by local childre about the Cragg coiners. The story is an interesting one. This area had a system of inheritance whereby on a man's death his land was dividing equally amongst his children. Although this seems fair within a very short number of generations the farms were too small to be viable. The result of this was some considerable poverty but also what we call diversification. People built new industries, the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Unfortunately one industry that flourished here was fraud and in particular the clipping of coins. Poverty has always been the engine of industrial innovation, unfortanately it is also the engine of crime. No-one know which it will produce meanwhile we all victims or beneficiaries of what I think they call the law of unintential consequences.