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 as

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, 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 be 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 be 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 shillings 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 poor

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 any 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 be 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 this 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 done

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 whatever.

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 labourers, 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 is 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 either 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 sometimes 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 sometimes 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, I 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.

CHAPTER XI.

OF THE RENT OF LAND.

Rent, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the

highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of

the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to

leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep

up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and

purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry,

together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood.

This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content

himself, without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him

any more. Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing,

whatever part of its price, is over and above this share, he naturally

endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is

evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual

circumstances of the land. Sometimes, indeed, the liberality, more

frequently the ignorance, of the landlord, makes him accept of somewhat

less than this portion; and sometimes, too, though more rarely, the

ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more, or to

content himself with somewhat less, than the ordinary profits of farming

stock in the neighbourhood. This portion, however, may still be considered

as the natural rent of land, or the rent at which it is naturally meant

that land should, for the most part, be let.

The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a

reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon

its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some

occasions; for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case. The

landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed

interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an

addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not

always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the

tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly

demands the same augmentation of rent as if they had been all made by his

own.

He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human

improvements. Kelp is a species of sea-weed, which, when burnt, yields an

alkaline salt, useful for making glass, soap, and for several other

purposes. It grows in several parts of Great Britain, particularly in

Scotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high-water mark, which

are twice every day covered with the sea, and of which the produce,

therefore, was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however,

whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for

it as much as for his corn-fields.

The sea in the neighbourhood of the islands of Shetland is more than

commonly abundant in fish, which makes a great part of the subsistence of

their inhabitants. But, in order to profit by the produce of the water,

they must have a habitation upon the neighbouring land. The rent of the

landlord is in proportion, not to what the farmer can make by the land,

but to what he can make both by the land and the water. It is partly paid

in sea-fish; and one of the very few instances in which rent makes a part

of the price of that commodity, is to be found in that country.

The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of

the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to

what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or

to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give.

Such parts only of the produce of land can commonly be brought to market,

of which the ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock which must

be employed in bringing them thither, together with its ordinary profits.

If the ordinary price is more than this, the surplus part of it will

naturally go to the rent of the land. If it is not more, though the

commodity may be brought to market, it can afford no rent to the landlord.

Whether the price is, or is not more, depends upon the demand.

There are some parts of the produce of land, for which the demand must

always be such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to

bring them to market; and there are others for which it either may or may

not be such as to afford this greater price. The former must always afford

a rent to the landlord. The latter sometimes may and sometimes may not,

according to different circumstances.

Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the

price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit. High or low

wages and profit are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is

the effect of it. It is because high or low wages and profit must be paid,

in order to bring a particular commodity to market, that its price is high

or low. But it is because its price is high or low, a great deal more, or

very little more, or no more, than what is sufficient to pay those wages

and profit, that it affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent at all.

The particular consideration, first, of those parts of the produce of land

which always afford some rent; secondly, of those which sometimes may and

sometimes may not afford rent; and, thirdly, of the variations which, in

the different periods of improvement, naturally take place in the relative

value of those two different sorts of rude produce, when compared both

with one another and with manufactured commodities, will divide this

chapter into three parts.

PART I.—Of the Produce of Land which always affords Rent.

As men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the

means of their subsistence, food is always more or less in demand. It can

always purchase or command a greater or smaller quantity of labour, and

somebody can always be found who is willing to do something in order to

obtain it. The quantity of labour, indeed, which it can purchase, is not

always equal to what it could maintain, if managed in the most economical

manner, on account of the high wages which are sometimes given to labour;

but it can always purchase such a quantity of labour as it can maintain,

according to the rate at which that sort of labour is commonly maintained

in the neighbourhood.

But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food

than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing

it to market, in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever

maintained. The surplus, too, is always more than sufficient to replace

the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits.

Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord.

The most desert moors in Norway and Scotland produce some sort of pasture

for cattle, of which the milk and the increase are always more than

sufficient, not only to maintain all the labour necessary for tending

them, and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or the owner of the

herd or flock, but to afford some small rent to the landlord. The rent

increases in proportion to the goodness of the pasture. The same extent of

ground not only maintains a greater number of cattle, but as they are

brought within a smaller compass, less labour becomes requisite to tend

them, and to collect their produce. The landlord gains both ways; by the

increase of the produce, and by the diminution of the labour which must be

maintained out of it.