Chapter 10




CHAPTER X.

OF WAGES AND PROFIT IN THE DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS OF LABOUR AND
STOCK.

The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and
stock, must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly equal, or continually tending to
equality. If, in the same neighbourhood, there was any employment evidently either more or
less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so
many would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other
employments. This, at least, would be the case in a society where things were left to follow
their natural course, where there was perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free
both to choose what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought
proper. Every man's interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous, and to shun the
disadvantageous employment.

Pecuniary wages and profit, indeed, are everywhere in Europe extremely different, according
to the different employments of labour and stock. But this difference arises, partly from
certain circumstances in the employments themselves, which, either really, or at least in the
imagination of men, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and counterbalance a great
one in others, and partly from the policy of Europe, which nowhere leaves things at perfect
liberty.

The particular consideration of those circumstances, and of that policy, will divide this
Chapter into two parts.

PART I. Inequalities arising from the nature of the employments themselves.

The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to
observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a
great one in others. First, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments
themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning
them ; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them ; fourthly, the small or
great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or
improbability of success in them.

First, the wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the
honourableness or dishonourableness, of the employment. Thus in most places, take the year
round, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver. His work is much easier. A
journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith. His work is not always easier, but it
is much cleanlier. A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in
twelve hours, as a collier, who is only a labourer, does in eight. His work is not quite so dirty,
is less dangerous, and is carried on in day-light, and above ground. Honour makes a great part
of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered,
they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to shew by and by. Disgrace has
the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business ; but it is in most
places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all
employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better
paid than any common trade whatever.

Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society,
become, in its advanced state, their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure
what they once followed from necessity. In the advanced state of society, therefore, they are
all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime. Fishermen
have been so since the time of Theocritus. {See Idyllium xxi.}. A poacher is everywhere a
very poor man in Great Britain. In countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers,
the licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. The natural taste for those employments
makes more people follow them, than can live comfortably by them; and the produce of their
labour, in proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market, to afford any thing but
the most scanty subsistence to the labourers.

Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stock in the same manner as the wages of
labour. The keeper of an inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, and who is
exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercises neither a very agreeable nor a very
creditable business. But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stock yields so
great a profit.

Secondly, the wages of labour vary with the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and
expense, of learning the business.

When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinary work to be performed by it before
it is worn out, it must be expected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with at least the
ordinary profits. A man educated at the expense of much labour and time to any of those
employments which require extraordinary dexterity and skill, may be compared to one of
those expensive machines. The work which he learns to perform, it must be expected, over
and above the usual wages of common labour, will replace to him the whole expense of his
education, with at least the ordinary profits of an equally valuable capital. It must do this too
in a reasonable time, regard being had to the very uncertain duration of human life, in the
same manner as to the more certain duration of the machine.

The difference between the wages of skilled labour and those of common labour, is founded
upon this principle.

The policy of Europe considers the labour of all mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers, as
skilled labour ; and that of all country labourers us common labour. It seems to suppose that
of the former to be of a more nice and delicate nature than that of the latter. It is so perhaps in
some cases ; but in the greater part it is quite otherwise, as I shall endeavour to shew by and
by. The laws and customs of Europe, therefore, in order to qualify any person for exercising
the one species of labour, impose the necessity of an apprenticeship, though with different
degrees of rigour in different places. They leave the other free and open to every body. During
the continuance of the apprenticeship, the whole labour of the apprentice belongs to his
master. In the meantime he must, in many cases, be maintained by his parents or relations,
and, in almost all cases, must be clothed by them. Some money, too, is commonly given to the
master for teaching him his trade. They who cannot give money, give time, or become bound
for more than the usual number of years ; a consideration which, though it is not always
advantageous to the master, on account of the usual idleness of apprentices, is always
disadvantageous to the apprentice. In country labour, on the contrary, the labourer, while he is
employed about the easier, learns the more difficult parts of his business, and his own labour
maintains him through all the different stages of his employment. It is reasonable, therefore,
that in Europe the wages of mechanics, artificers, and manufacturers, should be somewhat
higher than those of common labourers. They are so accordingly, and their superior gains
make them, in most places, be considered as a superior rank of people. This superiority,
however, is generally very small: the daily or weekly earnings of journeymen in the more
common sorts of manufactures, such as those of plain linen and woollen cloth, computed at an
average, are, in most places, very little more than the day-wages of common labourers. Their
employment, indeed, is more steady and uniform, and the superiority of their earnings, taking
the whole year together, may be somewhat greater. It seems evidently, however, to be no
greater than what is sufficient to compensate the superior expense of their education.
Education in the ingenious arts, and in the liberal professions, is still more tedious and
expensive. The pecuniary recompence, therefore, of painters and sculptors, of lawyers and
physicians, ought to be much more liberal; and it is so accordingly.

The profits of stock seem to be very little affected by the easiness or difficulty of learning the
trade in which it is employed. All the different ways in which stock is commonly employed in
great towns seem, in reality, to be almost equally easy and equally difficult to learn. One
branch, either of foreign or domestic trade, cannot well be a much more intricate business than
another.

Thirdly, the wages of labour in different occupations vary with the constancy or inconstancy
of employment.

Employment is much more constant in some trades than in others. In the greater part of
manufactures, a journeyman maybe pretty sure of employment almost every day in the year
that he is able to work. A mason or bricklayer, on the contrary, can work neither in hard frost
nor in foul weather, and his employment at all other times depends upon the occasional calls
of his customers. He is liable, in consequence, to be frequently without any. What he earns,
therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him
some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so
precarious a situation must sometimes occasion. Where the computed earnings of the greater
part of manufacturers, accordingly, are nearly upon a level with the day-wages of common
labourers, those of masons and bricklayers are generally from one-half more to double those
wages. Where common labourers earn four or five shillings a-week, masons and bricklayers
frequently earn seven and eight; where the former earn six, the latter often earn nine and ten ;
and where the former earn nine and ten, as in London, the latter commonly earn fifteen and
eighteen. No species of skilled labour, however, seems more easy to learn than that of masons
and bricklayers. Chairmen in London, during the summer season, are said sometimes to be
employed as bricklayers. The high wages of those workmen, therefore, are not so much the
recompence of their skill, as the compensation for the inconstancy of their employment.

A house-carpenter seems to exercise rather a nicer and a more ingenious trade than a mason.
In most places, however, for it is not universally so, his day-wages are somewhat lower. His
employment, though it depends much, does not depend so entirely upon the occasional calls
of his customers; and it is not liable to be interrupted by the weather.

When the trades which generally afford constant employment, happen in a particular place not
to do so, the wages of the workmen always rise a good deal above their ordinary proportion to
those of common labour. In London, almost all journeymen artificers are liable to be called
upon and dismissed by their masters from day to day, and from week to week, in the same
manner as day-labourers in other places. The lowest order of artificers, journeymen tailors,
accordingly, earn their half-a-crown a-day, though eighteen pence may be reckoned the wages
of common labour. In small towns and country villages, the wages of journeymen tailors
frequently scarce equal those of common labour ; but in London they are often many weeks
without employment, particularly during the summer.

When the inconstancy of employment is combined with the hardship, disagreeableness, and
dirtiness of the work, it sometimes raises the wages of the most common labour above those
of the most skilful artificers. A collier working by the piece is supposed, at Newcastle, to earn
commonly about double, and, in many parts of Scotland, about three times, the wages of
common labour. His high wages arise altogether from the hardship, disagreeableness, and
dirtiness of his work. His employment may, upon most occasions, be as constant as he
pleases. The coal-heavers in London exercise a trade which, in hardship, dirtiness, and
disagreeableness, almost equals that of colliers ; and, from the unavoidable irregularity in the
arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very
inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common
labour, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four and
five times those wages. In the inquiry made into their condition a few years ago, it was found
that, at the rate at which they were then paid, they could earn from six to ten shillings a-day.
Six shillings are about four times the wages of common labour in London; and, in every
particular trade, the lowest common earnings may always be considered as those of the far
greater number. How extravagant soever those earnings may appear, if they were more than
sufficient to compensate all the disagreeable circumstances of the business, there would soon
be so great a number of competitors, as, in a trade which has no exclusive privilege, would
quickly reduce them to a lower rate.

The constancy or inconstancy of employment cannot affect the ordinary profits of stock in any
particular trade. Whether the stock is or is not constantly employed, depends, not upon the
trade, but the trader.

Fourthly, the wages of labour vary according to the small or great trust which must be reposed
in the workmen.

The wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are everywhere superior to those of many other
workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity, on account of the precious
materials with which they are entrusted. We trust our health to the physician, our fortune, and
sometimes our life and reputation, to the lawyer and attorney. Such confidence could not
safely be reposed in people of a very mean or low condition. Their reward must be such,
therefore, as may give them that rank in the society which so important a trust requires. The
long time and the great expense which must be laid out in their education, when combined
with this circumstance, necessarily enhance still further the price of their labour.

When a person employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust; and the credit which he
may get from other people, depends, not upon the nature of the trade, but upon their opinion
of his fortune, probity and prudence. The different rates of profit, therefore, in the different
branches of trade, cannot arise from the different degrees of trust reposed in the traders.

Fifthly, the wages of labour in different employments vary according to the probability or
improbability of success in them.

The probability that any particular person shall ever be qualified for the employments to
which he is educated, is very different in different occupations. In the greatest part of
mechanic trades success is almost certain; but very uncertain in the liberal professions. Put
your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of
shoes; but send him to study the law, it as at least twenty to one if he ever makes such
proficiency as will enable him to live by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those who
draw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession,
where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been
gained by the unsuccessful twenty. The counsellor at law, who, perhaps, at near forty years of
age, begins to make something by his profession, ought to receive the retribution, not only of
his own so tedious and expensive education, but of that of more than twenty others, who are
never likely to make any thing by it. How extravagant soever the fees of counsellors at law
may sometimes appear, their real retribution is never equal to this. Compute, in any particular
place, what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be annually spent, by all the
different workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will
find that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. But make the same computation with
regard to all the counsellors and students of law, in all the different Inns of Court, and you
will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expense, even
though you rate the former as high, and the latter as low, as can well be done. The lottery of
the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery ; and that as well as many
other liberal and honourable professions, is, in point of pecuniary gain, evidently
under-recompensed.

Those professions keep their level, however, with other occupations ; and,
notwithstanding these discouragements, all the most generous and liberal spirits are eager to
crowd into them. Two different causes contribute to recommend them. First, the desire of the
reputation which attends upon superior excellence in any of them ; and, secondly, the natural
confidence which every man has, more or less, not only in his own abilities, but in his own
good fortune.

To excel in any profession, in which but few arrive at mediocrity, it is the most decisive mark
of what is called genius, or superior talents. The public admiration which attends upon such
distinguished abilities makes always a part of their reward; a greater or smaller, in proportion
as it is higher or lower in degree. It makes a considerable part of that reward in the profession
of physic ; a still greater, perhaps, in that of law; in poetry and philosophy it makes almost the
whole.

There are some very agreeable and beautiful talents, of which the possession commands a
certain sort of admiration, but of which the exercise, for the sake of gain, is considered,
whether from reason or prejudice, as a sort of public prostitution. The pecuniary recompence,
therefore, of those who exercise them in this manner, must be sufficient, not only to pay for
the time, labour, and expense of acquiring the talents, but for the discredit which attends the
employment of them as the means of subsistence. The exorbitant rewards of players,
opera-singers, opera-dancers, etc. are founded upon those two principles ; the rarity and
beauty of the talents, and the discredit of employing them in this manner. It seems absurd at
first sight, that we should despise their persons, and yet reward their talents with the most
profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must of necessity do the other, Should
the public opinion or prejudice ever alter with regard to such occupations, their pecuniary
recompence would quickly diminish. More people would apply to them, and the competition
would quickly reduce the price of their labour. Such talents, though far from being common,
are by no means so rare as imagined. Many people possess them in great perfection, who
disdain to make this use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if any thing
could be made honourably by them.

The over-weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities, is an
ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption
in their own good fortune has been less taken notice of. It is, however, if possible, still more
universal. There is no man living, who, when in tolerable health and spirits, has not some
share of it. The chance of gain is by every man more or less over-valued, and the chance of
loss is by most men under-valued, and by scarce any man, who is in tolerable health and
spirits, valued more than it is worth.

That the chance of gain is naturally overvalued, we may learn from the universal success of
lotteries. The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery, or one in which
the whole gain compensated the whole loss; because the undertaker could make nothing by it.
In the state lotteries, the tickets are really not worth the price which is paid by the original
subscribers, and yet commonly sell in the market for twenty, thirty, and sometimes forty per
cent. advance. The vain hopes of gaining some of the great prizes is the sole cause of this
demand. The soberest people scarce look upon it as a folly to pay a small sum for the chance
of gaining ten or twenty thousand pounds, though they know that even that small sum is
perhaps twenty or thirty per cent. more than the chance is worth. In a lottery in which no prize
exceeded twenty pounds, though in other respects it approached much nearer to a perfectly
fair one than the common state lotteries, there would not be the same demand for tickets. In
order to have a better chance for some of the great prizes, some people purchase several
tickets ; and others, small shares in a still greater number. There is not, however, a more
certain proposition in mathematics, than that the more tickets you adventure upon, the more
likely you are to be a loser. Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for
certain ; and the greater the number of your tickets, the nearer you approach to this certainty.

That the chance of loss is frequently undervalued, and scarce ever valued more than it is
worth, we may learn from the very moderate profit of insurers. In order to make insurance,
either from fire or sea-risk, a trade at all, the common premium must be sufficient to
compensate the common losses, to pay the expense of management, and to afford such a profit
as might have been drawn from an equal capital employed in any common trade. The person
who pays no more than this, evidently pays no more than the real value of the risk, or the
lowest price at which he can reasonably expect to insure it. But though many people have
made a little money by insurance, very few have made a great fortune; and, from this
consideration alone, it seems evident enough that the ordinary balance of profit and loss is not
more advantageous in this than in other common trades, by which so many people make
fortunes. Moderate, however, as the premium of insurance commonly is, many people despise
the risk too much to care to pay it. Taking the whole kingdom at an average, nineteen houses
in twenty, or rather, perhaps, ninety-nine in a hundred, are not insured from fire. Sea-risk is
more alarming to the greater part of people ; and the proportion of ships insured to those not
insured is much greater. Many sail, however, at all seasons, and even in time of war,
without any insurance. This may sometimes, perhaps, be done without any imprudence. When
a great company, or even a great merchant, has twenty or thirty ships at sea, they may, as it
were, insure one another. The premium saved up on them all may more than compensate such
losses as they are likely to meet with in the common course of chances. The neglect of
insurance upon shipping, however, in the same manner as upon houses, is, in most cases, the
effect of no such nice calculation, but of mere thoughtless rashness, and presumptuous
contempt of the risk.

The contempt of risk, and the presumptuous hope of success, are in no period of life more
active than at the age at which young people choose their professions. How little the fear of
misfortune is then capable of balancing the hope of good luck, appears still more evidently in
the readiness of the common people to enlist as soldiers, or to go to sea, than in the eagerness
of those of better fashion to enter into what are called the liberal professions.

What a common soldier may lose is obvious enough. Without regarding the danger, however,
young volunteers never enlist so readily as at the beginning of a new war ; and though they
have scarce any chance of preferment, they figure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a
thousand occasions of acquiring honour and distinction which never occur. These romantic
hopes make the whole price of their blood. Their pay is less than that of common labourers,
and, in actual service, their fatigues are much greater.

The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as that of the army. The son of a
creditable labourer or artificer may frequently go to sea with his father's consent ; but if he
enlists as a soldier, it is always without it. Other people see some chance of his making
something by the one trade; nobody but himself sees any of his making any thing by the other.
The great admiral is less the object of public admiration than the great general ; and the
highest success in the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune and reputation than equal
success in the land. The same difference runs through all the inferior degrees of preferment in
both. By the rules of precedency, a captain in the navy ranks with a colonel in the army ; but
he does not rank with him in the common estimation. As the great prizes in the lottery are
less, the smaller ones must be more numerous. Common sailors, therefore, more frequently
get some fortune and preferment than common soldiers ; and the hope of those prizes is what
principally recommends the trade. Though their skill and dexterity are much superior to that
of almost any artificers; and though their whole life is one continual scene of hardship and
danger ; yet for all this dexterity and skill, for all those hardships and dangers, while they
remain in the condition of common sailors, they receive scarce any other recompence but the
pleasure of exercising the one and of surmounting the other. Their wages are not greater
than those of common labourers at the port which regulates the rate of seamen's wages. As
they are continually going from port to port, the monthly pay of those who sail from all the
different ports of Great Britain, is more nearly upon a level than that of any other workmen in
those different places ; and the rate of the port to and from which the greatest number sail, that
is, the port of London, regulates that of all the rest. At London, the wages of the greater part of
the different classes of workmen are about double those of the same classes at Edinburgh. But
the sailors who sail from the port of London, seldom earn above three or four shillings a
month more than those who sail from the port of Leith, and the difference is frequently not so
great. In time of peace, and in the merchant-service, the London price is from a guinea to
about seven-and-twenty shillings the calendar month. A common labourer in London, at the
rate of nine or ten shillings a week, may earn in the calendar month from forty to
five-and-forty shillings. The sailor, indeed, over and above his pay, is supplied with
provisions. Their value, however, may not perhaps always exceed the difference between his
pay and that of the common labourer ; and though it sometimes should, the excess will not be
clear gain to the sailor, because he cannot share it with his wife and family, whom he must
maintain out of his wages at home.

The dangers and hair-breadth escapes of a life of adventures, instead of disheartening young
people, seem frequently to recommend a trade to them. A tender mother, among the inferior
ranks of people, is often afraid to send her son to school at a sea-port town, lest the sight of
the ships, and the conversation and adventures of the sailors, should entice him to go to sea.
The distant prospect of hazards, from which we can hope to extricate ourselves by courage
and address, is not disagreeable to us, and does not raise the wages of labour in any
employment. It is otherwise with those in which courage and address can be of no avail. In
trades which are known to be very unwholesome, the wages of labour are always remarkably
high. Unwholesomeness is a species of disagreeableness, and its effects upon the wages of
labour are to be ranked under that general head.

In all the different employments of stock, the ordinary rate of profit varies more or less with
the certainty or uncertainty of the returns. These are, in general, less uncertain in the inland
than in the foreign trade, and in some branches of foreign trade than in others ; in the trade to
North America, for example, than in that to Jamaica. The ordinary rate of profit always rises
more or less with the risk. it does not, however, seem to rise in proportion to it, or so as to
compensate it completely. Bankruptcies are most frequent in the most hazardous trades. The
most hazardous of all trades, that of a smuggler, though, when the adventure succeeds, it is
likewise the most profitable, is the infallible road to bankruptcy. The presumptuous hope of
success seems to act here as upon all other occasions, and to entice so many adventurers into
those hazardous trades, that their competition reduces the profit below what is sufficient to
compensate the risk. To compensate it completely, the common returns ought, over and above
the ordinary profits of stock, not only to make up for all occasional losses, but to afford a
surplus profit to the adventurers, of the same nature with the profit of insurers. But if the
common returns were sufficient for all this, bankruptcies would not be more frequent in these
than in other trades.

Of the five circumstances, therefore, which vary the wages of labour, two only affect the
profits of stock ; the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the business, and the risk or security
with which it is attended. In point of agreeableness or disagreeableness, there is little or no
difference in the far greater part of the different employments of stock, but a great deal in
those of labour ; and the ordinary profit of stock, though it rises with the risk, does not always
seem to rise in proportion to it. It should follow from all this, that, in the same society or
neighbourhood, the average and ordinary rates of profit in the different employments of stock
should he more nearly upon a level than the pecuniary wages of the different sorts of labour.

They are so accordingly. The difference between the earnings of a common labourer and those
of a well employed lawyer or physician, is evidently much greater than that between the
ordinary profits in any two different branches of trade. The apparent difference, besides, in the
profits of different trades, is generally a deception arising from our not always distinguishing
what ought to be considered as wages, from what ought to be considered as profit.

Apothecaries' profit is become a bye-word, denoting something uncommonly extravagant.
This great apparent profit, however, is frequently no more than the reasonable wages of
labour. The skill of an apothecary is a much nicer and more delicate matter than that of any
artificer whatever ; and the trust which is reposed in him is of much greater importance. He is
the physician of the poor in all cases, and of the rich when the distress or danger is not very
great. His reward, therefore, ought to be suitable to his skill and his trust ; and it arises
generally from the price at which he sells his drugs. But the whole drugs which the best
employed apothecary in a large market-town, will sell in a year, may not perhaps cost him
above thirty or forty pounds. Though he should sell them, therefore, for three or four hundred,
or at a thousand per cent. profit, this may frequently be no more than the reasonable wages of
his labour, charged, in the only way in which he can charge them, upon the price of his drugs.
The greater part of the apparent profit is real wages disguised in the garb of profit.

In a small sea-port town, a little grocer will make forty or fifty per cent. upon a stock of a
single hundred pounds, while a considerable wholesale merchant in the same place will scarce
make eight or ten per cent. upon a stock of ten thousand. The trade of the grocer may be
necessary for the conveniency of the inhabitants, and the narrowness of the market may not
admit the employment of a larger capital in the business. The man, however, must not only
live by his trade, but live by it suitably to the qualifications which it requires. Besides
possessing a little capital, he must be able to read, write, and account and must be a tolerable
judge, too, of perhaps fifty or sixty different sorts of goods, their prices, qualities, and the
markets where they are to be had cheapest. He must have all the knowledge, in short, that is
necessary for a great merchant, which nothing hinders him from becoming but the want of a
sufficient capital. Thirty or forty pounds a year cannot be considered as too great a
recompence for the labour of a person so accomplished. Deduct this from the seemingly great
profits of his capital, and little more will remain, perhaps, than the ordinary profits of stock.
The greater part of the apparent profit is, in this case too, real wages.

The difference between the apparent profit of the retail and that of the wholesale trade, is
much less in the capital than in small towns and country villages. Where ten thousand pounds
can be employed in the grocery trade, the wages of the grocer's labour must be a very trifling
addition to the real profits of so great a stock. The apparent profits of the wealthy retailer,
therefore, are there more nearly upon a level with those of the wholesale merchant. It is upon
this account that goods sold by retail are generally as cheap, and frequently much cheaper, in
the capital than in small towns and country villages. Grocery goods, for example, are
generally much cheaper ; bread and butchers' meat frequently as cheap. It costs no more to
bring grocery goods to the great town than to the country village ; but it costs a great deal
more to bring corn and cattle, as the greater part of them must be brought from a much greater
distance. The prime cost of grocery goods, therefore, being the same in both places, they are
cheapest where the least profit is charged upon them. The prime cost of bread and butchers'
meat is greater in the great town than in the country village; and though the profit is less,
therefore they are not always cheaper there, but often equally cheap. In such articles as bread
and butchers' meat, the same cause which diminishes apparent profit, increases prime cost.
The extent of the market, by giving employment to greater stocks, diminishes apparent profit;
but by requiring supplies from a greater distance, it increases prime cost. This diminution of
the one and increase of the other, seem, in most cases, nearly to counterbalance one another ;
which is probably the reason that, though the prices of corn and cattle are commonly very
different in different parts of the kingdom, those of bread and butchers' meat are generally
very nearly the same through the greater part of it.

Though the profits of stock, both in the wholesale and retail trade, are generally less in the
capital than in small towns and country villages, yet great fortunes are frequently acquired
from small beginnings in the former, and scarce ever in the latter. In small towns and country
villages, on account of the narrowness of the market, trade cannot always be extended as stock
extends. In such places, therefore, though the rate of a particular person's profits may be very
high, the sum or amount of them can never be very great, nor consequently that of his annual
accumulation. In great towns, on the contrary, trade can be extended as stock increases, and
the credit of a frugal and thriving man increases much faster than his stock. His trade is
extended in proportion to the amount of both ; and the sum or amount of his profits is in
proportion to the extent of his trade, and his annual accumulation in proportion to the amount
of his profits. It seldom happens, however, that great fortunes are made, even in great towns,
by any one regular, established, and well-known branch of business, but in consequence of a
long life of industry, frugality, and attention. Sudden fortunes, indeed, are sometimes made in
such places, by what is called the trade of speculation. The speculative merchant exercises no
one regular, established, or well-known branch of business. He is a corn merchant this year,
and a wine merchant the next, and a sugar, tobacco, or tea merchant the year after. He enters
into every trade, when he foresees that it is likely to lie more than commonly profitable, and
he quits it when he foresees that its profits are likely to return to the level of other trades. His
profits and losses, therefore, can bear no regular proportion to those of any one established
and well-known branch of business. A bold adventurer may sometimes acquire a considerable
fortune by two or three successful speculations, but is just as likely to lose one by two or three
unsuccessful ones. This trade can be carried on nowhere but in great towns. It is only in places
of the most extensive commerce and correspondence that the intelligence requisite for it can
be had.

The five circumstances above mentioned, though they occasion considerable inequalities in
the wages of labour and profits of stock, occasion none in the whole of the advantages and
disadvantages, real or imaginary, of the different employments of either. The nature of those
circumstances is such, that they make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and
counterbalance a great one in others.

In order, however, that this equality may take place in the whole of their advantages or
disadvantages, three things are requisite, even where there is the most perfect freedom. First
the employments must be well known and long established in the neighbourhood; secondly,
they must be in their ordinary, or what may be called their natural state ; and, thirdly, they
must be the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them.

First, This equality can take place only in those employments which are well known, and have
been long established in the neighbourhood.

Where all other circumstances are equal, wages are generally higher in new than in old trades.
When a projector attempts to establish a new manufacture, he must at first entice his workmen
from other employments, by higher wages than they can either earn in their own trades, or
than the nature of his work would otherwise require ; and a considerable time must pass away
before he can venture to reduce them to the common level. Manufactures for which the
demand arises altogether from fashion and fancy, are continually changing, and seldom last
long enough to be considered as old established manufactures. Those, on the contrary, for
which the demand arises chiefly from use or necessity, are less liable to change, and the same
form or fabric may continue in demand for whole centuries together. The wages of labour,
therefore, are likely to be higher in manufactures of the former, than in those of the latter kind.
Birmingham deals chiefly in manufactures of the former kind ; Sheffield in those of the latter ;
and the wages of labour in those two different places are said to be suitable to this difference
in the nature of their manufactures.

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or of any new
practice in agriculture, is always a speculation from which the projector promises himself
extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more
frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise ; but, in general, they bear no regular proportion
to those of other old trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly
at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known,
the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.

Secondly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different
employments of labour and stock, can take place only in the ordinary, or what may be called
the natural state of those employments.

The demand for almost every different species of labour is sometimes greater, and sometimes
less than usual. In the one case, the advantages of the employment rise above, in the other
they fall below the common level. The demand for country labour is greater at hay-time and
harvest than during the greater part of the year ; and wages rise with the demand. In time of
war, when forty or fifty thousand sailors are forced from the merchant service into that of the
king, the demand for sailors to merchant ships necessarily rises with their scarcity ; and their
wages, upon such occasions, commonly rise from a guinea and seven-and-twenty shillings to
forty shilling's and three pounds a-month. In a decaying manufacture, on the contrary, many
workmen, rather than quit their own trade, are contented with smaller wages than would
otherwise be suitable to the nature of their employment.

The profits of stock vary with the price of the commodities in which it is employed. As the
price of any commodity rises above the ordinary or average rate, the profits of at least some
part of the stock that is employed in bringing it to market, rise above their proper level, and as
it falls they sink below it. All commodities are more or less liable to variations of price, but
some are much more so than others. In all commodities which are produced by human
industry, the quantity of industry annually employed is necessarily regulated by the annual
demand, in such a manner that the average annual produce may, as nearly as possible, be
equal to the average annual consumption. In some employments, it has already been observed,
the same quantity of industry will always produce the same, or very nearly the same quantity
of commodities. In the linen or woollen manufactures, for example, the same number of hands
will annually work up very nearly the same quantity of linen and woollen cloth. The
variations in the market price of such commodities, therefore, can arise only from some
accidental variation in the demand. A public mourning raises the price of black cloth. But as
the demand for most sorts of plain linen and woollen cloth is pretty uniform. so is likewise the
price. But there are other employments in which the same quantity of industry will not always
produce the same quantity of commodities. The same quantity of industry, for example, will,
in different years, produce very different quantities of corn, wine, hops, sugar tobacco, etc.
The price of such commodities, therefore, varies not only with the variations of demand, but
with the much greater and more frequent variations of quantity, and is consequently extremely
fluctuating; but the profit of some of the dealers must necessarily fluctuate with the price of
the commodities. The operations of the speculative merchant are principally employed about
such commodities. He endeavours to buy them up when he foresees that their price is likely to
rise, and to sell them when it is likely to fall.

Thirdly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different
employments of labour and stock, can take place only in such as are the sole or principal
employments of those who occupy them.

When a person derives his subsistence from one employment, which does not occupy the
greater part of his time, in the intervals of his leisure he is often willing to work at another for
less wages than would otherwise suit the nature of the employment.

There still subsists, in many parts of Scotland, a set of people called cottars or cottagers,
though they were more frequent some years ago than they are now. They are a sort of
out-servants of the landlords and farmers. The usual reward which they receive from their
master is a house, a small garden for pot-herbs, as much grass as will feed a cow, and,
perhaps, an acre or two of bad arable land. When their master has occasion for their labour, he
gives them, besides, two pecks of oatmeal a-week, worth about sixteen pence sterling. During
a great part of the year, he has little or no occasion for their labour, and the cultivation of their
own little possession is not sufficient to occupy the time which is left at their own disposal.
When such occupiers were more numerous than they are at present, they are said to have been
willing to give their spare time for a very small recompence to any body, and to have wrought
for less wages than other labourers. In ancient times, they seem to have been common all
over Europe. In countries ill cultivated, and worse inhabited, the greater part of landlords and
farmers could not otherwise provide themselves with the extraordinary number of hands
which country labour requires at certain seasons. The daily or weekly recompence which such
labourers occasionally received from their masters, was evidently not the whole price of their
labour. Their small tenement made a considerable part of it. This daily or weekly recompence,
however, seems to have been considered as the whole of it, by many writers who have
collected the prices of labour and provisions in ancient times, and who have taken pleasure in
representing both as wonderfully low.

The produce of such labour comes frequently cheaper to market than would otherwise be
suitable to its nature. Stockings, in many parts of Scotland, are knit much cheaper than they
can anywhere be wrought upon the loom. They are the work of servants and labourers who
derive the principal part of their subsistence from some other employment. More than a
thousand pair of Shetland stockings are annually imported into Leith, of which the price is
from fivepence to seven-pence a pair. At Lerwick, the small capital of the Shetland islands,
tenpence a-day, I have been assured, is a common price of common labour. In the same
islands, they knit worsted stockings to the value of a guinea a pair and upwards.

The spinning of linen yarn is carried on in Scotland nearly in the same way as the knitting of
stockings, by servants, who are chiefly hired for other purposes. They earn but a very scanty
subsistence, who endeavour to get their livelihood by either of those trades. In most parts of
Scotland, she is a good spinner who can earn twentypence a-week.

In opulent countries, the market is generally so extensive, that any one trade is sufficient to
employ the whole labour and stock of those who occupy it. Instances of people living by one
employment, and, at the same time, deriving some little advantage from another, occur
chiefly in pour countries. The following instance, however, of something of the same kind, is
to be found in the capital of a very rich one. There is no city in Europe, I believe, in which
house-rent is dearer than in London, and yet I know no capital in which a furnished apartment
can be hired so cheap. Lodging is not only much cheaper in London than in Paris; it is much
cheaper than in Edinburgh, of the same degree of goodness ; and, what may seem
extraordinary, the dearness of house-rent is the cause of the cheapness of lodging. The
dearness of house-rent in London arises, not only from those causes which render it dear in all
great capitals, the dearness of labour, the dearness of all the materials of building, which must
generally be brought from a great distance, and, above all, the dearness of ground-rent, every
landlord acting the part of a monopolist, and frequently exacting a higher rent for a single acre
of bad land in a town, than can be had for a hundred of the best in the country; but it arises in
part from the peculiar manners and customs of the people, which oblige every master of a
family to hire a whole house from top to bottom. A dwelling-house in England means every
thing that is contained under the same roof. In France, Scotland, and many other parts of
Europe, it frequently means no more than a single storey. A tradesman in London is obliged to
hire a whole house in that part of the town where his customers live. His shop is upon the
ground floor, and he and his family sleep in the garret ; and he endeavours to pay a part of his
house-rent by letting the two middle storeys to lodgers. He expects to maintain his family by
his trade, and not by his lodgers. Whereas at Paris and Edinburgh, people who let lodgings
have commonly no other means of subsistence ; and the price of the lodging must pay, not
only the rent of the house, but the whole expense of the family.

PART II. � Inequalities occasioned by the Policy of Europe.

Such are the inequalities in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different
employments of labour and stock, which the defect of any of the three requisites above
mentioned must occasion, even where there is the most perfect liberty. But the policy of
Europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty, occasions other inequalities of much greater
importance.

It does this chiefly in the three following ways. First, by restraining the competition in some
employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them ;
secondly, by increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and, thirdly, by
obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both from employment to employment,
and from place to place.

First, The policy of Europe occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the
advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, by restraining
the competition in some employments to a smaller number than might otherwise be disposed
to enter into them.

The exclusive privileges of corporations are the principal means it makes use of for this
purpose.

The exclusive privilege of an incorporated trade necessarily restrains the competition, in the
town where it is established, to those who are free of the trade. To have served an
apprenticeship in the town, under a master properly qualified, is commonly the necessary
requisite for obtaining this freedom. The bye-laws of the corporation regulate sometimes the
number of apprentices which any master is allowed to have, and almost always the number of
years which each apprentice is obliged to serve. The intention of both regulations is to restrain
the competition to a much smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into the
trade. The limitation of the number of apprentices restrains it directly. A long term of
apprenticeship restrains it more indirectly, but as effectually, by increasing the expense of
education.

In Sheffield, no master cutler can have more than one apprentice at a time, by a bye-law of the
corporation. In Norfolk and Norwich, no master weaver can have more than two apprentices,
under pain of forfeiting five pounds a-month to the king. No master hatter can have more than
two apprentices anywhere in England, or in the English plantations, under pain of forfeiting;
five pounds a-month, half to the king, and half to him who shall sue in any court of record.
Both these regulations, though they have been confirmed by a public law of the kingdom, are
evidently dictated by the same corporation-spirit which enacted the bye-law of Sheffield. The
silk-weavers in London had scarce been incorporated a year, when they enacted a bye-law,
restraining any master from having more than two apprentices at a time. It required a
particular act of parliament to rescind this bye-law.

Seven years seem anciently to have been, all over Europe, the usual term established for the
duration of apprenticeships in the greater part of incorporated trades. All such incorporations
were anciently called universities, which, indeed, is the proper Latin name for any
incorporation whatever. The university of smiths, the university of tailors, etc. are expressions
which we commonly meet with in the old charters of ancient towns. When those particular
incorporations, which are now peculiarly called universities, were first established, the term of
years which it was necessary to study, in order to obtain the degree of master of arts, appears
evidently to have been copied from the term of apprenticeship in common trades, of which the
incorporations were much more ancient. As to have wrought seven years under a master
properly qualified, was necessary, in order to entitle my person to become a master, and to
have himself apprentices in a common trade ; so to have studied seven years under a master
properly qualified. was necessary to entitle him to become a master, teacher, or doctor (words
anciently synonymous), in the liberal arts, and to have scholars or apprentices (words likewise
originally synonymous) to study under him.

By the 5th of Elizabeth, commonly called the Statute of Apprenticeship, it was enacted, that
no person should, for the future, exercise any trade, craft, or mystery, at that time exercised in
England, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least ; and
what before had been the bye-law of many particular corporations, became in England the
general and public law of all trades carried on in market towns. For though the words of the
statute are very general, and seem plainly to include the whole kingdom, by interpretation its
operation has been limited to market towns; it having been held that, in country villages, a
person may exercise several different trades, though he has not served a seven years
apprenticeship to each, they being necessary for the conveniency of the inhabitants, and the
number of people frequently not being sufficient to supply each with a particular set of hands.
By a strict interpretation of the words, too, the operation of this statute has been limited to
those trades which were established in England before the 5th of Elizabeth, and has never
been extended to such as have been introduced since that time. This limitation has given
occasion to several distinctions, which, considered as rules of police, appear as foolish as can
well be imagined. It has been adjudged, for example, that a coach-maker can neither himself
make nor employ journeymen to make his coach-wheels, but must buy them of a master
wheel-wright; this latter trade having been exercised in England before the 5th of Elizabeth.
But a wheel-wright, though he has never served an apprenticeship to a coachmaker, may
either himself make or employ journeymen to make coaches; the trade of a coachmaker not
being within the statute, because not exercised in England at the time when it was made. The
manufactures of Manchester, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton, are many of them, upon this
account, not within the statute, not having been exercised in England before the 5th of
Elizabeth.

In France, the duration of apprenticeships is different in different towns and in different
trades. In Paris, five years is the term required in a great number; but, before any person can
be qualified to exercise the trade as a master, he must, in many of them, serve five years more
as a journeyman. During this latter term, he is called the companion of his master, and the
term itself is called his companionship.

In Scotland, there is no general law which regulates universally the duration of
apprenticeships. The term is different in different corporations. Where it is long, a part of it
may generally be redeemed by paying a small fine. In most towns, too, a very small fine is
sufficient to purchase the freedom of any corporation. The weavers of linen and hempen cloth,
the principal manufactures of the country, as well as all other artificers subservient to them,
wheel-makers, reel-makers, etc. may exercise their trades in any town-corporate without
paying any fine. In all towns-corporate, all persons are free to sell butchers' meat upon any
lawful day of the week. Three years is, in Scotland, a common term of apprenticeship, even in
some very nice trades; and, in general, I know of no country in Europe, in which corporation
laws are so little oppressive.

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all
other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the
strength and dexterity of his hands ; and to hinder him from employing this strength and
dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour. is a plain violation
of this most sacred property. It is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty, both of the
workman, and of those who might be disposed to employ him. As it hinders the one from
working at what he thinks proper, so it hinders the others from employing whom they think
proper. To judge whether he is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of
the employers, whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the lawgiver, lest
they should employ an improper person, is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive.

The institution of long apprenticeships can give no security that insufficient workmanship
shall not frequently be exposed to public sale. When this is done, it is generally the effect of
fraud, and not of inability ; and the longest apprenticeship can give no security against fraud.
Quite different regulations are necessary to prevent this abuse. The sterling mark upon plate,
and the stamps upon linen and woollen cloth, give the purchaser much greater security than
any statute of apprenticeship. He generally looks at these, but never thinks it worth while to
enquire whether the workman had served a seven years apprenticeship.

The institution of long apprenticeships has no tendency to form young people to industry. A
journeyman who works by the piece is likely to be industrious, because he derives a benefit
from every exertion of his industry. An apprentice is likely to be idle, and almost always is so,
because he has no immediate interest to be otherwise. In the inferior employments, the sweets
of labour consist altogether in the recompence of labour. They who are soonest in a condition
to enjoy the sweets of it, are likely soonest to conceive a relish for it, and to acquire the early
habit of industry. A young man naturally conceives an aversion to labour, when for a long
time he receives no benefit from it. The boys who are put out apprentices from public charities
are generally bound for more than the usual number of years, and they generally turn out very
idle and worthless.

Apprenticeships were altogether unknown to the ancients. The reciprocal duties of master and
apprentice make a considerable article in every modern code. The Roman law is perfectly
silent with regard to them. I know no Greek or Latin word (I might venture, I believe, to assert
that there is none) which expresses the idea we now annex to the word apprentice, a servant
bound to work at a particular trade for the benefit of a master, during a term of years, upon
condition that the master shall teach him that trade.

Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts, which are much superior to
common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to
require a long course of instruction. The first invention of such beautiful machines, indeed,
and even that of some of the instruments employed in making them, must no doubt have been
the work of deep thought and long time, and may justly be considered as among the happiest
efforts of human ingenuity. But when both have been fairly invented, and are well understood,
to explain to any young man, in the completest manner, how to apply the instruments, and
how to construct the machines, cannot well require more than the lessons of a few weeks;
perhaps those of a few days might be sufficient. In the common mechanic trades, those of a
few days might certainly be sufficient. The dexterity of hand, indeed, even in common trades,
cannot be acquired without much practice and experience. But a young man would practice
with much more diligence and attention, if from the beginning he wrought as a journeyman,
being paid in proportion to the little work which he could execute, and paying in his turn for
the materials which he might sometimes spoil through awkwardness and inexperience. His
education would generally in this way be more effectual, and always less tedious and
expensive. The master, indeed, would be a loser. He would lose all the wages of the
apprentice, which he now saves, for seven years together. In the end, perhaps, the apprentice
himself would he a loser. In a trade so easily learnt he would have more competitors, and his
wages, when he came to be a complete workman, would be much less than at present. The
same increase of competition would reduce the profits of the masters, as well as the wages of
workmen. The trades, the crafts, the mysteries, would all be losers. But the public would be a
gainer, the work of all artificers coming in this way much cheaper to market.

It is to prevent his reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that
free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater
part of corporation laws have been established. In order to erect a corporation, no other
authority in ancient times was requisite, in many parts of Europe, but that of the
town-corporate in which it was established. In England, indeed, a charter from the king was
likewise necessary. But this prerogative of the crown seems to have been reserved rather for
extorting money from the subject, than for the defence of the common liberty against such
oppressive monopolies. Upon paying a fine to the king, the charter seems generally to have
been readily granted ; and when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to
act as a corporation, without a charter, such adulterine guilds, as they were called, were not
always disfranchised upon that account, but obliged to fine annually to the king, for
permission to exercise their usurped privileges {See Madox Firma Burgi p. 26 etc.}. The
immediate inspection of all corporations, and of the bye-laws which they might think proper
to enact for their own government, belonged to the town-corporate in which they were
established; and whatever discipline was exercised over them, proceeded commonly, not from
the king, but from that greater incorporation of which those subordinate ones were only parts
or members.

The government of towns-corporate was altogether in the hands of traders and artificers, and it
was the manifest interest of every particular class of them, to prevent the market from being
overstocked, as they commonly express it, with their own particular species of industry; which
is in reality to keep it always understocked. Each class was eager to establish regulations
proper for this purpose, and, provided it was allowed to do so, was willing to consent that
every other class should do the same. In consequence of such regulations, indeed, each class
was obliged to buy the goods they had occasion for from every other within the town,
somewhat dearer than they otherwise might have done. But, in recompence, they were
enabled to sell their own just as much dearer ; so that, so far it was as broad as long, as they
say ; and in the dealings of the different classes within the town with one another, none of
them were losers by these regulations. But in their dealings with the country they were all
great gainers; and in these latter dealings consist the whole trade which supports and enriches
every town.

Every town draws its whole subsistence, and all the materials of its industry, from the:
country. It pays for these chiefly in two ways. First, by sending back to the country a part of
those materials wrought up and manufactured ; in which case, their price is augmented by the
wages of the workmen, and the profits of their masters or immediate employers ; secondly, by
sending to it a part both of the rude and manufactured produce, either of other countries, or of
distant parts of the same country, imported into the town; in which case, too, the original price
of those goods is augmented by the wages of the carriers or sailors, and by the profits of the
merchants who employ them. In what is gained upon the first of those branches of commerce,
consists the advantage which the town makes by its manufactures; in what is gained upon the
second, the advantage of its inland and foreign trade. The wages of the workmen, and the
profits of their different employers, make up the whole of what is gained upon both. Whatever
regulations, therefore, tend to increase those wages and profits beyond what they otherwise:
would be, tend to enable the town to purchase, with a smaller quantity of its labour, the
produce of a greater quantity of the labour of the country. They give the traders and artificers
in the town an advantage over the landlords, farmers, and labourers, in the country, and break
down that natural equality which would otherwise take place in the commerce which is
carried on between them. The whole annual produce of the labour of the society is annually
divided between those two different sets of people. By means of those regulations, a greater
share of it is given to the inhabitants of the town than would otherwise fall to them, and a less
to those of' the country.

The price which the town really pays for the provisions and materials annually imported into
it, is the quantity of manufactures and other goods annually exported from it. The dearer the
latter are sold, the cheaper the former are bought. The industry of the town becomes more, and
that of the country less advantageous.

That the industry which is carried on in towns is, everywhere in Europe, more advantageous
than that which is carried on in the country, without entering into any very nice computations,
we may satisfy ourselves by one very simple and obvious observation. In every country of
Europe, we find at least a hundred people who have acquired great fortunes, from small
beginnings, by trade and manufactures, the industry which properly belongs to towns, for one
who has done so by that which properly belongs to the country, the raising of rude produce by
the improvement and cultivation of land. Industry, therefore, must be better rewarded, the
wages of labour and the profits of stock must evidently be greater, in the one situation than in
the other. But stock and labour naturally seek the most advantageous employment. They
naturally, therefore, resort as much as they can to the town, and desert the country.

The inhabitants of a town being collected into one place, can easily combine together. The
most insignificant trades carried on in towns have, accordingly, in some place or other, been
incorporated ; and even where they have never been incorporated, yet the corporation-spirit,
the jealousy of strangers, the aversion to take apprentices, or to communicate the secret of
their trade, generally prevail in them, and often teach them, by voluntary associations and
agreements, to prevent that free competition which they cannot prohibit by bye-laws. The
trades which employ but a small number of hands, run most easily into such combinations.
Half-a-dozen wool-combers, perhaps, are necessary to keep a thousand spinners and weavers
at work. By combining not to take apprentices, they can not only engross the employment, but
reduce the whole manufacture into a sort of slavery to themselves, and raise the price of their
labour much above what is due to the nature of their work.

The inhabitants of the country, dispersed in distant places, cannot easily combine together.
They have not only never been incorporated, but the incorporation spirit never has prevailed
among them. No apprenticeship has ever been thought necessary to qualify for husbandry, the
great trade of the country. After what are called the fine arts, and the liberal professions,
however, there is perhaps no trade which requires so great a variety of knowledge and
experience. The innumerable volumes which have been written upon it in all languages, may
satisfy us, that among the wisest and most learned nations, it has never been regarded as a
matter very easily understood. And from all those volumes we shall in vain attempt to collect
that knowledge of its various and complicated operations which is commonly possessed even
by the common farmer ; how contemptuously soever the very contemptible authors of some of
them may sometimes affect to speak of him. There is scarce any common mechanic trade, on
the contrary, of which all the operations may not be as completely and distinctly explained in
a pamphlet of a very few pages, as it is possible for words illustrated by figures to explain
them. In the history of the arts, now publishing by the French Academy of Sciences, several of
them are actually explained in this manner. The direction of operations, besides, which must
be varied with every change of the weather, as well as with many other accidents, requires
much more judgment and discretion, than that of those which are always the same, or very
nearly the same.

Not only the art of the farmer, the general direction of the operations of husbandry, but many
inferior branches of country labour require much more skill and experience than the greater
part of mechanic trades. The man who works upon brass and iron, works with instruments,
and upon materials of which the temper is always the same, or very nearly the same. But the
man who ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen, works with instruments of which
the health, strength, and temper, are very different upon different occasions. The condition of
the materials which he works upon, too, is as variable as that of the instruments which he
works with, and both require to be managed with much judgment and discretion. The common
ploughman, though generally regarded as the pattern of stupidity and ignorance, is seldom
defective in this judgment and discretion. He is less accustomed, indeed, to social intercourse,
than the mechanic who lives in a town. His voice and language are more uncouth, and more
difficult to be understood by those who are not used to them. His understanding, however,
being accustomed to consider a greater variety of objects, is generally much superior to that of
the other, whose whole attention, from morning till night, is commonly occupied in
performing one or two very simple operations. How much the lower ranks of people in the
country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either
business or curiosity has led to converse much with both. In China and Indostan, accordingly,
both the rank and the wages of country labourers are said to be superior to those of the greater
part of artificers and manufacturers. They would probably be so everywhere, if corporation
laws and the corporation spirit did not prevent it.

The superiority which the industry of the towns has everywhere in Europe over that of the
country, is not altogether owing to corporations and corporation laws. It is supported by many
other regulations. The high duties upon foreign manufactures, and upon all goods imported by
alien merchants, all tend to the same purpose. Corporation laws enable the inhabitants of
towns to raise their prices, without fearing to be undersold by the free competition of their
own countrymen. Those other regulations secure them equally against that of foreigners. The
enhancement of price occasioned by both is everywhere finally paid by the landlords, farmers,
and labourers, of the country, who have seldom opposed the establishment of such
monopolies. They have commonly neither inclination nor fitness to enter into combinations;
and the clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade them, that the
private interest of a part, and of a subordinate part, of the society, is the general interest of the
whole.

In Great Britain, the superiority of the industry of the towns over that of the country seems to
have been greater formerly than in the present times. The wages of country labour approach
nearer to those of manufacturing labour, and the profits of stock employed in agriculture to
those of trading and manufacturing stock, than they are said to have none in the last century,
or in the beginning of the present. This change may be regarded as the necessary, though very
late consequence of the extraordinary encouragement given to the industry of the towns. The
stocks accumulated in them come in time to be so great, that it can no longer be employed
with the ancient profit in that species of industry which is peculiar to them. That industry has
its limits like every other ; and the increase of stock, by increasing the competition,
necessarily reduces the profit. The lowering of profit in the town forces out stock to the
country, where, by creating a new demand for country labour, it necessarily raises its wages. It
then spreads itself, if I my say so, over the face of the land, and, by being employed in
agriculture, is in part restored to the country, at the expense of which, in a great measure, it
had originally been accumulated in the town. That everywhere in Europe the greatest
improvements of the country have been owing to such over flowings of the stock originally
accumulated in the towns, I shall endeavour to shew hereafter, and at the same time to
demonstrate, that though some countries have, by this course, attained to a considerable
degree of opulence, it is in itself necessarily slow, uncertain, liable to be disturbed and
interrupted by innumerable accidents, and, in every respect, contrary to the order of nature and
of reason The interests, prejudices, laws, and customs, which have given occasion to it, I shall
endeavour to explain as fully and distinctly as I can in the third and fourth books of this
Inquiry.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the
conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It
is impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or
would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the
same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such
assemblies, much less to render them necessary.

A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names
and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals
who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a
direction where to find every other man of it.

A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves, in order to provide for
their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage,
renders such assemblies necessary.

An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding
upon the whole. In a free trade, an effectual combination cannot be established but by the
unanimous consent of every single trader, and it cannot last longer than every single trader
continues of the same mind. The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law, with proper
penalties, which will limit the competition more effectually and more durably than any
voluntary combination what. ever.

The pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade, is without
any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman, is not
that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment
which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation necessarily
weakens the force of this discipline. A particular set of workmen must then be employed, let
them behave well or ill. It is upon this account that, in many large incorporated towns, no
tolerable workmen are to be found, even in some of the most necessary trades. If you would
have your work tolerably executed, it must be done in the suburbs, where the workmen,
having no exclusive privilege, have nothing but their character to depend upon, and you must
then smuggle it into the town as well as you can.

It is in this manner that the policy of Europe, by restraining the competition in some
employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them,
occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the
different employments of labour and stock.

Secondly, The policy of Europe, by increasing the competition in some employments beyond
what it naturally would be, occasions another inequality, of an opposite kind, in the whole of
the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock.

It has been considered as of so much importance that a proper number of young people should
be educated for certain professions, that sometimes the public, and sometimes the piety of
private founders, have established many pensions, scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries, etc. for
this purpose, which draw many more people into those trades than could otherwise pretend to
follow them. In all Christian countries, I believe, the education of the greater part of
churchmen is paid for in this manner. Very few of them are educated altogether at their own
expense. The long, tedious, and expensive education, therefore, of those who are, will not
always procure them a suitable reward, the church being crowded with people, who, in order
to get employment, are willing to accept of a much smaller recompence than what such an
education would otherwise have entitled them to ; and in this manner the competition of the
poor takes away the reward of the rich. It would be indecent, no doubt, to compare either a
curate or a chaplain with a journeyman in any common trade. The pay of a curate or chaplain,
however, may very properly be considered as of the same nature with the wages of a
journeyman. They are all three paid for their work according to the contract which they may
happen to make with their respective superiors. Till after the middle of the fourteenth century,
five merks, containing about as much silver as ten pounds of our present money, was in
England the usual pay of a curate or a stipendiary parish priest, as we find it regulated by the
decrees of several different national councils. At the same period, fourpence a-day, containing
the same quantity of silver as a shilling of our present money, was declared to be the pay of a
master mason; and threepence a-day, equal to ninepence of our present money, that of a
journeyman mason. {See the Statute of Labourers, 25, Ed. III.} The wages of both these
labourer's, therefore, supposing them to have been constantly employed, were much superior
to those of the curate. The wages of the master mason, supposing him to have been without
employment one-third of the year, would have fully equalled them. By the 12th of Queen
Anne, c. 12. it is declared, "That whereas, for want of sufficient maintenance and
encouragement to curates, the cures have, in several places, been meanly supplied, the bishop
is, therefore, empowered to appoint, by writing under his hand and seal, a sufficient certain
stipend or allowance, not exceeding fifty, and not less than twenty pounds a-year". Forty
pounds a-year is reckoned at present very good pay for a curate; and, notwithstanding this act
of parliament, there are many curacies under twenty pounds a-year. There are journeymen
shoemakers in London who earn forty pounds a-year, and there is scarce an industrious
workman of any kind in that metropolis who does not earn more than twenty. This last sum,
indeed, does not exceed what frequently earned by common labourers in many country
parishes. Whenever the law has attempted to regulate the wages of workmen, it has always
been rather to lower them than to raise them. But the law has, upon many occasions,
attempted to raise the wages of curates, and, for the dignity of the church, to oblige the rectors
of parishes to give them more than the wretched maintenance which they themselves might be
willing to accept of. And, in both cases, the law seems to have been equally ineffectual, and
has never either been able to raise the wages of curates, or to sink those of labourers to the
degree that was intended; because it has never been able to hinder either the one from being
willing to accept of less than the legal allowance, on account of the indigence of their situation
and the multitude of their competitors, or the other from receiving more, on account of the
contrary competition of those who expected to derive either profit or pleasure from employing
them.

The great benefices and other ecclesiastical dignities support the honour of the church.
notwithstanding the mean circumstances of some of its inferior members. The respect paid to
the profession, too, makes some compensation even to them for the meanness of their
pecuniary recompence. In England, and in all Roman catholic countries, the lottery of the
church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary. The example of the churches
of Scotland, of Geneva, and of several other protestant churches, may satisfy us, that in so
creditable a profession, in which education is so easily procured, the hopes of much more
moderate benefices will draw a sufficient number of learned, decent, and respectable men into
holy orders.

In professions in which there are no benefices, such as law and physic, if an equal proportion
of people were educated at the public expense, the competition would soon be so great as to
sink very much their pecuniary reward. It might then not be worth any man's while to educate
his son to either of those professions at his own expense. They would be entirely abandoned to
such as had been educated by those public charities, whose numbers and necessities would
oblige them in general to content themselves with a very miserable recompence, to the entire
degradation of the now respectable professions of law and physic.

That unprosperous race of men, commonly called men of letters, are pretty much in the
situation which lawyers and physicians probably would be in, upon the foregoing supposition.
In every part of Europe, the greater part of them have been educated for the church, but have
been hindered by different reasons from entering into holy orders. They have generally,
therefore, been educated at the public expense; and their numbers are everywhere so great, as
commonly to reduce the price of their labour to a very paltry recompence.

Before the invention of the art of printing, the only employment by which a man of letters
could make any thing by his talents, was that of a public or private teacher, or by
communicating to other people the curious and useful knowledge which he had acquired
himself ; and this is still surely a more honourable, a more useful, and, in general, even a more
profitable employment than that other of writing for a bookseller, to which the art of printing
has given occasion. The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to
qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the
greatest practitioners in law and physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no
proportion to that of the lawyer or physician, because the trade of the one is crowded with
indigent people, who have been brought up to it at the public expense ; whereas those of the
other two are encumbered with very few who have not been educated at their own. The usual
recompence, however, of public and private teachers, small as it may appear, would
undoubtedly be less than it is, if the competition of those yet more indigent men of letters,
who write for bread, was not taken out of the market. Before the invention of the art of
printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonymous. The
different governors of the universities, before that time, appear to have often granted licences
to their scholars to beg.

In ancient times, before any charities of this kind had been established for the education of
indigent people to the learned professions, the rewards of eminent teachers appear to have
been much more considerable. Isocrates, in what is called his discourse against the sophists.
reproaches the teachers of his own times with inconsistency. 'They make the most magnificent
promises to their scholars," says he, " and undertake to teach them to be wise, to be happy,
and to be just; and, in return for so important a service, they stipulate the paltry reward of four
or five minae." "They who teach wisdom," continues he, "ought certainly to be wise
themselves ; but if any man were to sell such a bargain for such a price, he would be
convicted of the most evident folly." He certainly does not mean here to exaggerate the
reward, and we may be assured that it was not less than he represents it. Four minae were
equal to thirteen pounds six shillings and eightpence ; five minae to sixteen pounds thirteen
shillings and fourpence.Something not less than the largest of those two sums, therefore, must
at that time have been usually paid to the most eminent teachers at Athens. Isocrates himself
demanded ten minae, or � 33:6:8 from each scholar. When he taught at Athens, he is said to
have had a hundred scholars. I understand this to be the number whom he taught at one time,
or who attended what we would call one course of lectures ; a number which will not appear
extraordinary from so great a city to so famous a teacher, who taught, too, what was at that
time the most fashionable of all sciences, rhetoric. He must have made, therefore, by each
course of lectures, a thousand minae, or � 3335:6:8. A thousand minae, accordingly, is said by
Plutarch, in another place, to have been his didactron, or usual price of teaching. Many other
eminent teachers in those times appear to have acquired great fortunes. Georgias made a
present to the temple of Delphi of his own statue in solid gold. We must not, I presume,
suppose that it was as large as the life. His way of living, as well as that of Hippias and
Protagoras, two other eminent teachers of those times, is represented by Plato as splendid,
even to ostentation. Plato himself is said to have lived with a good deal of magnificence.
Aristotle, after having been tutor to Alexander, and most munificently rewarded, as it is
universally agreed, both by him and his father, Philip, thought it worth while,
notwithstanding, to return to Athens, in order to resume the teaching of his school. Teachers
of the sciences were probably in those times less common than they came to be in an age or
two afterwards, when the competition had probably somewhat reduced both the price of their
labour and the admiration for their persons. The most eminent of them, however, appear
always to have enjoyed a degree of consideration much superior to any of the like profession
in the present times. The Athenians sent Carneades the academic, and Diogenes the stoic,
upon a solemn embassy to Rome; and though their city had then declined from its former
grandeur, it was still an independent and considerable republic.

Carneades, too, was a Babylonian by birth; and as there never was a people more jealous of
admitting foreigners to public offices than the Athenians, their consideration for him must
have been very great.

This inequality is, upon the whole, perhaps rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It
may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher ; but the cheapness of literary
education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency. The
public, too, might derive still greater benefit from it, if the constitution of those schools and
colleges, in which education is carried on, was more reasonable than it is at present through
the greater part of Europe.

Thirdly, the policy of Europe, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both
from employment to employment, and from place to place, occasions, in some cases, a very
inconvenient inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of their different
employments.

The statute of apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to
another, even in the same place. The exclusive privileges of corporations obstruct it from one
place to another, even in the same employment.

It frequently happens, that while high wages are given to the workmen in one manufacture,
those in another are obliged to content themselves with bare subsistence. The one is in an
advancing state, and has therefore a continual demand for new hands ; the other is in a
declining state, and the superabundance of hands is continually increasing. Those two
manufactures may sometimes be in the same town, and sometimes in the same
neighbourhood, without being able to lend the least assistance to one another. The statute of
apprenticeship may oppose it in the one case, and both that and an exclusive corporation in the
other. In many different manufactures, however, the operations are so much alike, that the
workmen could easily change trades with one another, if those absurd laws did not hinder
them. The arts of weaving plain linen and plain silk, for example, are almost entirely the
same. That of weaving plain woollen is somewhat different ; but the difference is so
insignificant, that either a linen or a silk weaver might become a tolerable workman in a very
few days. If any of those three capital manufactures, therefore, were decaying, the workmen
might find a resource in one of the other two which was in a more prosperous condition; and
their wages would neither rise too high in the thriving, nor sink too low in the decaying
manufacture. The linen manufacture, indeed, is in England, by a particular statute, open to
every body ; but as it is not much cultivated through the greater part of the country, it can
afford no general resource to the work men of other decaying manufactures, who, wherever
the statute of apprenticeship takes place, have no other choice, but dither to come upon the
parish, or to work as common labourers ; for which, by their habits, they are much worse
qualified than for any sort of manufacture that bears any resemblance to their own. They
generally, therefore, chuse to come upon the parish.

Whatever obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another, obstructs
that of stock likewise; the quantity of stock which can be employed in any branch of business
depending very much upon that of the labour which can be employed in it. Corporation laws,
however, give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another, than
to that of labour. It is everywhere much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege
of trading in a town-corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it.

The obstruction which corporation laws give to the free circulation of labour is common, I
believe, to every part of Europe. That which is given to it by the poor laws is, so far as I know,
peculiar to England. It consists in the difficulty which a poor man finds in obtaining a
settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his industry in any parish but that to which he
belongs. It is the labour of artificers and manufacturers only of which the free circulation is
obstructed by corporation laws. The difficulty of obtaining settlements obstructs even that of
common labour. It may be worth while to give some account of the rise, progress, and present
state of this disorder, the greatest, perhaps, of any in the police of England.

When, by the destruction of monasteries, the poor had been deprived of the charity of those
religious houses, after some other ineffectual attempts for their relief, it was enacted, by the
43d of Elizabeth, c. 2. that every parish should be bound to provide for its own poor, and that
overseers of the poor should be annually appointed, who, with the church-wardens, should
raise, by a parish rate, competent sums for this purpose.

By this statute, the necessity of providing for their own poor was indispensably imposed upon
every parish. Who were to be considered as the poor of each parish became, therefore, a
question of some importance. This question, after some variation, was at last determined by
the 13th and 14th of Charles II. when it was enacted, that forty days undisturbed residence
should gain any person a settlement in any parish; but that within that time it should be lawful
for two justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the church-wardens or overseers of the
poor, to remove any new inhabitant to the parish where he was last legally settled ; unless he
either rented a tenement of ten pounds a-year, or could give such security for the discharge of
the parish where he was then living, as those justices should judge sufficient.

Some frauds, it is said, were committed in consequence of this statute; parish officers
sometime's bribing their own poor to go clandestinely to another parish, and, by keeping
themselves concealed for forty days, to gain a settlement there, to the discharge of that to
which they properly belonged. It was enacted, therefore, by the 1st of James II. that the forty
days undisturbed residence of any person necessary to gain a settlement, should be accounted
only from the time of his delivering notice, in writing, of the place of his abode and the
number of his family, to one of the church-wardens or overseers of the parish where he came
to dwell.

But parish officers, it seems, were not always more honest with regard to their own than they
had been with regard to other parishes, and sometimes connived at such intrusions, receiving
the notice, and taking no proper steps in consequence of it. As every person in a parish,
therefore, was supposed to have an interest to prevent as much as possible their being
burdened by such intruders, it was further enacted by the 3rd of William III. that the forty
days residence should be accounted only from the publication of such notice in writing on
Sunday in the church, immediately after divine service.

" After all," says Doctor Burn, "this kind of settlement, by continuing forty days after
publication of notice in writing, is very seldom obtained ; and the design of the acts is not so
much for gaining of settlements, as for the avoiding of them by persons coming into a parish
clandestinely, for the giving of notice is only putting a force upon the parish to remove. But if
a person's situation is such, that it is doubtful whether he is actually removable or not, he
shall, by giving of notice, compel the parish either to allow him a settlement uncontested, by
suffering him to continue forty days, or by removing him to try the right."

This statute, therefore, rendered it almost impracticable for a poor man to gain a new
settlement in the old way, by forty days inhabitancy. But that it might not appear to preclude
altogether the common people of one' parish from ever establishing themselves with security
in another, it appointed four other ways by which a settlement might be gained without any
notice delivered or published. The first was, by being taxed to parish rates and paying them;
the second, by being elected into an annual parish office, and serving in it a year ; the third, by
serving an apprenticeship in the parish ; the fourth, by being hired into service there for a year,
and continuing in the same service during the whole of it. Nobody can gain a settlement by
either of the two first ways, but by the public deed of the whole parish, who are too well
aware of the consequences to adopt any new-comer, who has nothing but his labour to support
him, either by taxing him to parish rates, or by electing him into a parish office.

No married man can well gain any settlement in either of the two last ways. An apprentice is
scarce ever married ; and it is expressly enacted, that no married servant shall gain any
settlement by being hired for a year. The principal effect of introducing settlement by service,
has been to put out in a great measure the old fashion of hiring for a year; which before had
been so customary in England, that even at this day, if no particular term is agreed upon, the
law intends that every servant is hired for a year. But masters are not always willing to give
their servants a settlement by hiring them in this manner ; and servants are not always willing
to be so hired, because, as every last settlement discharges all the foregoing, they might
thereby lose their original settlement in the places of their nativity, the habitation of their
parents and relations.

No independent workman, it is evident, whether labourer or artificer, is likely to gain any new
settlement, either by apprenticeship or by service. When such a person, therefore, carried his
industry to a new parish, he was liable to be removed, how healthy and industrious soever, at
the caprice of any churchwarden or overseer, unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds
a-year, a thing impossible for one who has nothing but his labour to live by, or could give
such security for the discharge of the parish as two justices of the peace should judge
sufficient.

What security they shall require, indeed, is left altogether to their discretion; but they cannot
well require less than thirty pounds, it having been enacted, that the purchase even of a
freehold estate of less than thirty pounds value, shall not gain any person a settlement, as not
being sufficient for the discharge of the parish. But this is a security which scarce any man
who lives by labour can give; and much greater security is frequently demanded.

In order to restore, in some measure, that free circulation of labour which those different
statutes had almost entirely taken away, the invention of certificates was fallen upon. By the
8th and 9th of William III. it was enacted that if any person should bring a certificate from the
parish where he was last legally settled, subscribed by the church-wardens and overseers of
the poor, and allowed by two justices of the peace, that every other parish should be obliged to
receive him; that he should not be removable merely upon account of his being likely to
become chargeable, but only upon his becoming actually chargeable ; and that then the parish
which granted the certificate should be obliged to pay the expense both of his maintenance
and of his removal. And in order to give the most perfect security to the parish where such
certificated man should come to reside, it was further enacted by the same statute, that he
should gain no settlement there by any means whatever, except either by renting a tenement of
ten pounds a-year, or by serving upon his own account in an annual parish office for one
whole year ; and consequently neither by notice nor by service, nor by apprenticeship, nor by
paying parish rates. By the 12th of Queen Anne, too, stat. 1, c.18, it was further enacted, that
neither the servants nor apprentices of such certificated man should gain any settlement in the
parish where he resided under such certificate.

How far this invention has restored that free circulation of labour, which the preceding
statutes had almost entirely taken away, we may learn from the following very judicious
observation of Doctor Burn. "It is obvious," says he, " that there are divers good reasons for
requiring certificates with persons coming to settle in any place; namely, that persons residing
under them can gain no settlement, neither by apprenticeship, nor by service, nor by giving
notice, nor by paying parish rates; that they can settle neither apprentices nor servants ; that if
they become chargeable, it is certainly known whither to remove them, and the parish shall be
paid for the removal, and for their maintenance in the mean time ; and that, if they fall sick,
and cannot be removed, the parish which gave the certificate must maintain them ; none of all
which can be without a certificate. Which reasons will hold proportionably for parishes not
granting certificates in ordinary cases; for it is far more than an equal chance, but that they
will have the certificated persons again, and in a worse condition." The moral of this
observation seems to be, that certificates ought always to be required by the parish where any
poor man comes to reside, and that they ought very seldom to be granted by that which he
purposes to leave. " There is somewhat of hardship in this matter of certificates," says the
same very intelligent author, in his History of the Poor Laws, "by putting it in the power of a
parish officer to imprison a man as it were for life, however inconvenient it may be for him to
continue at that place where he has had the misfortune to acquire what is called a settlement,
or whatever advantage he may propose himself by living elsewhere."

Though a certificate carries along with it no testimonial of good behaviour, and certifies
nothing but that the person belongs to the parish to which he really does belong, it is
altogether discretionary in the parish officers either to grant or to refuse it. A mandamus was
once moved for, says Doctor Burn, to compel the church-wardens and overseers to sign a
certificate; but the Court of King's Bench rejected the motion as a very strange attempt.

The very unequal price of labour which we frequently find in England, in places at no great
distance from one another, is probably owing to the obstruction which the law of settlements
gives to a poor man who would carry his industry from one parish to another without a
certificate. A single man, indeed who is healthy and industrious, may sometimes reside by
sufferance without one ; but a man with a wife and family who should attempt to do so,
would, in most parishes, be sure of being removed ; and, if the single man should afterwards
marry, he would generally be removed likewise. The scarcity of hands in one parish,
therefore, cannot always be relieved by their superabundance in another, as it is constantly in
Scotland, and. I believe, in all other countries where there is no difficulty of settlement. In
such countries, though wages may sometimes rise a little in the neighbourhood of a great
town, or wherever else there is an extraordinary demand for labour, and sink gradually as the
distance from such places increases, till they fall back to the common rate of the country ; yet
we never meet with those sudden and unaccountable differences in the wages of neighbouring
places which we sometimes find in England, where it is often more difficult for a poor man to
pass the artificial boundary of a parish, than an arm of the sea, or a ridge of high mountains,
natural boundaries which sometimes separate very distinctly different rates of wages in other
countries.

To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour, from the parish where he chooses to
reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice. The common people of England,
however, so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of most other countries, never
rightly understanding wherein it consists, have now, for more than a century together, suffered
themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy. Though men of reflection, too,
have some. times complained of the law of settlements as a public grievance ; yet it has never
been the object of any general popular clamour, such as that against general warrants, an
abusive practice undoubtedly, but such a one as was not likely to occasion any general
oppression. There is scarce a poor man in England, of forty years of age, 1 will venture to say,
who has not, in some part of his life, felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill-contrived
law of settlements.

I shall conclude this long chapter with observing, that though anciently it was usual to rate
wages, first by general laws extending over the whole kingdom, and afterwards by particular
orders of the justices of peace in every particular county, both these practices have now gone
entirely into disuse " By the experience of above four hundred years," says Doctor Burn, " it
seems time to lay aside all endeavours to bring under strict regulations, what in its own nature
seems incapable of minute limitation ; for if all persons in the same kind of work were to
receive equal wages, there would be no emulation, and no room left for industry or ingenuity."

Particular acts of parliament, however, still attempt sometimes to regulate wages in particular
trades, and in particular places. Thus the 8th of George III. prohibits, under heavy penalties,
all master tailors in London, and five miles round it, from giving, and their workmen from
accepting, more than two shillings and sevenpence halfpenny a-day, except in the case of a
general mourning. Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between
masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation,
therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes
otherwise when in favour of the masters. Thus the law which obliges the masters in several
different trades to pay their workmen in money, and not in goods, is quite just and equitable.
It imposes no real hardship upon the masters. It only obliges them to pay that value in money,
which they pretended to pay, but did not always really pay, in goods. This law is in favour of
the workmen; but the 8th of George III. is in favour of the masters. When masters combine
together, in order to reduce the wages of their workmen, they commonly enter into a private
bond or agreement, not to give more than a certain wage, under a certain penalty. Were the
workmen to enter into a contrary combination of the same kind, not to accept of a certain
wage, under a certain penalty, the law would punish them very severely; and, if it dealt
impartially, it would treat the masters in the same manner. But the 8th of George III. enforces
by law that very regulation which masters sometimes attempt to establish by such
combinations. The complaint of the workmen, that it puts the ablest and most industrious
upon the same footing with an ordinary workman, seems perfectly well founded.

In ancient times, too, it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other
dealers, by regulating the price of provisions and ether goods. The assize of bread is, so far as
I know, the only remnant of this ancient usage. Where there is an exclusive corporation, it
may, perhaps, be proper to regulate the price of the first necessary of life ; but, where there is
none, the competition will regulate it much better than any assize. The method of fixing the
assize of bread, established by the 31st of George II. could not be put in practice in Scotland,
on account of a defect in the law, its execution depending upon the office of clerk of the
market, which does not exist there. This defect was not remedied till the third of George III.
The want of an assize occasioned no sensible inconveniency; and the establishment of one in
the few places where it has yet taken place has produced no sensible advantage. In the greater
part of the towns in Scotland, however, there is an incorporation of bakers, who claim
exclusive privileges, though they are not very strictly guarded. The proportion between the
different rates, both of wages and profit, in the different employments of labour and stock,
seems not to be much affected, as has already been observed, by the riches or poverty, the
advancing, stationary, or declining state of the society. Such revolutions in the public welfare,
though they affect the general rates both of wages and profit, must, in the end, affect them
equally in all different employments. The proportion between them, therefore, must remain
the same, and cannot well be altered, at least for any considerable time, by any such
revolutions.




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