The Wealth of Nations

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.