 Part 2 of Chapter 10 of Book 1 of the Wealth of Nations. The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as that of the army. The son of a creditable laborer 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 anything 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 ranks 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 artificer, 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 recompense but the pleasure of exercising the one and of surmounting the other. Their wages are not greater than those of common laborers 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 in 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 laborer 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 laborer, 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-breath 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 seaport town, lest the sight of 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 labor 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 labor are always remarkably high. Unwholesomeness is a species of disagreeableness, and its effects upon the wages of labor are to be ranked under that general head. In all the different implements 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 trades in North America, for example, then 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 quickly. 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 adventures 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 adventures 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 labor to 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 labor. And in the ordinary profit of stock, though it rises with a risk, does not always seem to rise in proportion to it. It should follow from all this, that in the same society or neighborhood, 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 labor. They are so accordingly. The difference between the earnings of a common laborer and those of a well-employed lawyer or physician is evidently much greater than that between the ordinary profits and 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. Apothecary's profit has become a byword, denoting something uncommonly extravagant. This great apparent profit, however, is frequently no more than the reasonable wages of labor. The skill of an apothecary is a much nicer and more delicate matter than that of any artificial 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 percent profit, this may frequently be no more than the reasonable wages of his labor 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 seaport town, a little grocer will make forty or fifty percent upon a stock of a single hundred pounds, while a considerable wholesale merchant in the same place will scarce make eight or ten percent upon a stock of ten thousand. The trade of the grocer may be necessary for the convenience 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 one of a sufficient capital. Thirty or forty pounds a year cannot be considered as two greater recompense for the labor of a person so accomplished. But this, from the seemingly great profits of his capital, and little more will remain, perhaps, in the ordinary profits of stock. The greater part of the apparent profit is, in this case, two 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 labor 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 meet 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, because 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 meet 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 meet, the same cause which diminishes apparent profit increases prime cost. The extent of the market by given 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 capital are commonly very different in different parts of the kingdom, those of bread and butchers meet are generally very nearly the same through the greater part of it. Though the profits of stock, both in the wholesale and retail trade, are generally less in the capital than in small towns and country villages, yet great fortunes are frequently acquired from small beginnings in the former and scarce ever in the latter. In small towns and country villages, on account of the narrowness of the market, trade cannot always be extended as stock extends. In such places, therefore, though the rate of a particular person's profits may be very high, the sum or amount of them can never be very great nor consequently that of his annual accumulation. In great towns on the contrary, trade can be extended as stock increases, and the credit of a frugal and thriving man increases much faster than his stock. His trade is extended in proportion to the amount of both, and the sum or amount of his profits is in proportion to the extent of his trade, and his annual accumulation in proportion to the amount of his profits. It seldom happens, however, that great fortunes are made, even in great towns, by any one regular established and well-known branch of business, but in consequence of a long life of industry, frugality, and attention. Sudden fortunes, indeed, are sometimes made in such places by what is called the trade of speculation. The speculative merchant exercises no one regular established or well-known branch of business. He is a corn merchant this year, and a wine merchant the next, and a sugar, tobacco, or tea merchant the year after. He enters into every trade when he foresees that it is likely to lie more than commonly profitable, and he quits it when he foresees that its profits are likely to return to the level of other trades. His profits and losses, therefore, can bear no regular proportion to those of any one established and well-known branch of business. A bold adventurer may sometimes acquire a considerable fortune by two or three successful speculations, but is just as likely to lose one by two or three unsuccessful ones. This trade can be carried on nowhere, but in great towns. It is only in places of the most extensive commerce and correspondence that the intelligence requisite for it can be had. The five circumstances above mention, though the occasion considerable inequalities in the wages of labor 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 neighborhood. 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 neighborhood. Where all other circumstances are equal, wages are generally higher and new than in old trades. When a projector attempts to establish a new manufacturer, he must at first entice his workmen from other employments by higher wages than they can either earn in their own trades, or then 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. Manufacturers for which the demand arises all together from fashion and fancy are continually changing, and seldom last long enough to be considered as old established manufacturers. 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 labor, therefore, are likely to be higher in manufacturers of the form than in those of the latter kind. Birmingham deals chiefly in manufacturers of the former kind, Sheffield in those of the latter. And the wages of labor in those two different places are said to be suitable to this difference in the nature of their manufacturers. The establishment of any new manufacturer, 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 neighborhood. 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 employment of labor in stock can take place only in the ordinary, or what may be called the natural state of those employment. The demand for almost every different species of labor 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 labor 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 40 or 50,000 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 in seven and twenty shillings to forty shillings and three pounds a month. In a decaying manufacturer, on the contrary, many workmen, rather than quit their own trade, are contended 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 employment, 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 woolen manufacturers, for example, the same number of hands will annually work up very nearly the same quantity of linen and woolen cloth. The variations in the market price of such commodities, therefore, can arise only from some accidental variation in the demand. A public morning raises the price of black cloth, but as the demand for most sorts of plain linen and woolen cloth is pretty uniform, so is likewise the price. But there are other employment 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 endeavors 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 labor and stock can take place only in such as are the sole or principal employments of those who occupy them. When a person derives 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 cotters, 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 occasioned for their labor he gives them, besides two pecs of oatmeal a week, worth about sixteen pence sterling. During a great part of the year he has little or no occasion for their labor, 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 recompense to anybody and to have wrought for less wages than other laborers. In ancient times they seemed 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 labor requires at certain seasons. The daily or weekly recompense which such laborers occasionally received from their masters was evidently not the whole price of their labor. Their small tenement made a considerable part of it. This daily or weekly recompense however seems to have been considered as the whole of it by many writers who have collected the prices of labor and provisions in ancient times and who have taken pleasure in representing both as wonderfully low. The produce of such labor 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 laborers who derive the principal part of their subsistence from other employment. More than a thousand pair of Shetland stockings are annually imported into Leith of which the price is from five pence to seven pence a pair. At Lurwick the small capital of the Shetland Islands ten pence a day I have been assured is a common price of common labor. In the same islands they knit worsted stockings to the value of a guinea 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 endeavor to get their livelihood by either of those trades. In most parts of Scotland she is a good spinner who can earn twenty pence a week. In opulent countries the market is generally so extensive that any one trade is sufficient to employ the whole labor 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 furnace department 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 labor the dearness of all the materials of building which must be generally 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 then 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 everything that is contained under the same roof. In France, Scotland and many other parts of Europe it frequently means no more than a single story. 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 endeavors to pay a part of his house rent by letting the two middle stories 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. End of Book 1, Chapter 10, Part 2. Part 3 of Chapter 10 of Book 1 of The Wealth of Nations. This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steven Escalera. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Part 3 of Chapter 10 of Book 1. Of wages and profit in the different employments of labour and stock. Part 2. Inequality is 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 occasioned 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 bylaws 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 bylaw of the corporation. In Norfolk and Norwich no master weaver can have more than two apprentices under paying 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 paying 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 bylaw of Sheffield. The silk weavers in London had scarce been incorporated a year when they enacted a bylaw restraining any master from having more than two apprentices at a time. It required a particular act of parliament to rescind this bylaw. 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 Taylor's etc. are expressions which we commonly meet with in the old charters of ancient towns. When those particular incorporations which are now peculiarly called universities were first established the term of years which it was necessary to study in order to obtain the degree of master of arts appears evidently to have been copied from the term of apprenticeship in common trades of which the incorporations were much more ancient. As to have wrought seven years under a master properly qualified was necessary in order to entitle my person to become a master and to have himself apprentices in a common trade. So to have studied seven years under a master properly qualified was necessary to entitle him to become a master, teacher or doctor words anciently synonymous in the liberal arts and to have scholars or apprentices words likewise originally synonymous to study under him. By the fifth 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 bylaw 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 same 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 convenience 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 to the operation of the statute has been limited to those trades which were established in England before the fifth 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 a judged for example that a coachmaker can neither himself make nor employed journeyman to make his coach wheels but must by them of a master wheelwright this latter trade having been exercised in England before the fifth of Elizabeth but a wheelwright though he has never served an apprenticeship to a coachmaker may either himself make or employed journeyman 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 manufacturers of Manchester Birmingham and Wolverhampton are many of them upon this account not within the statute not having been exercised in England before the fifth 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 hempencloth the principal manufacturers of the country as well as all other artificers subservient to them wheel makers reel makers et cetera 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 labor 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 the strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor is a plain violation of this most sacred property it is a manifest encroachment upon the just liberty both of the workmen and of those who might be disposed to employ him as it henders the one from working at what he thinks proper so it henders 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 who's interested 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 woolen cloth give the purchaser much greater security than any statute of apprenticeship he generally looks at these but never thinks it worthwhile to inquire whether the workmen 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 peace 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 suites of labor consist altogether in the recompense of labor they who are soonest in a condition to enjoy the suites 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 labor 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 a 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 learned 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 and 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 then for the defense 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 adultering guilds as they were called were not always disfranchised upon that account but obliged to find annually to the king for permission to exercise their usurp privileges the immediate inspection of all corporations and of the bylaws which they might think proper to enact for their own government belong 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 industries 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 and consequence of such regulations indeed each class was obliged to buy the goods they had occasion for from every other within the town somewhat dear than they otherwise might have done but in recompense they were enabled to sell their own just as much dear 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 consists 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 brought up and manufactured in which case their price is augmented by the wages of the workmen and the profits of their masters or media 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 manufacturers 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 labor the produce of a greater quantity of the labor of the country they give the traders and artificers in the town an advantage over the landlords farmers and laborers 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 labor 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 what otherwise fall to them and 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 manufacturers 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 manufacturers 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 labor and the profits of stock must evidently be greater in the one situation than in the other but stock and labor naturally seek the most advantageous employment they naturally therefore resort as much as they can to the town and desert the country end of book one chapter ten part three part four of chapter ten of book one of the wealth of nations this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Stephen Escalara the wealth of nations by Adam Smith part four of chapter ten of book one of wages and profit in the different employment of labor and stock 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 bylaws the trades which employ but a small number of hands run most easily into such combinations half a dozen wool comers 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 manufacturer into a sort of slavery to themselves and raise the price of their labor 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 so ever 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 labor 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 plows 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 required to be managed with much judgment and discretion the common plowman 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 great 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 India accordingly both the rank and the wages of the common laborers 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 manufacturers and upon all goods imported by alien merchants all tend to the same purpose corporation laws enable the inhabitants of town 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 laborers 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 clamor 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 formally than in the present times the wages of country labor approach nearer to those of manufacturing labor and the profits of stock employed in agriculture to those of trading in manufacturing stock then they are said to have none in the last century or in the beginning of the present this change may be regarded as the necessary though very late consequence of the extraordinary encouragement given to the industry of the towns the stocks accumulated in them come in time to be so great that it can no longer be employed with the ancient profit in that species of industry which is peculiar to them that industry has its limits like every other and the increase of stock by increasing the competition necessarily reduces the profit the lowering of profit in the town forces out stock to the country where by creating a new demand for country labor it necessarily raises its wages it then spreads itself if I may 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 overflowing of the stock originally accumulated in the towns I shall endeavor to show hereafter and at the same time to demonstrate that those 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 interest prejudices laws and customs which have given occasion to it I shall endeavor 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 the 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 bylaw with proper penalties which will limit the competition more factually and more durably than any voluntary combination whatever the pretense 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 labor and stock secondly the policy of Europe by increasing the competition in some employments beyond what it naturally would be occasions another equality of an opposite kind in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labor 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 recompense 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 mercs containing about as much silver as ten pounds of our present money was in England the usual pay of a curate or a steppendary parish priest as we find it regulated by the decrees of several different national councils at the same period four pence a day containing the same quantity of silver as the shilling of our present money was declared to be the pay of a master mason and three pence a day equal to nine pence of our present money that of a journeyman mason the wages of both these laborers 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 equaled them by the twelfth of queen and c-12 it is declared that whereas for one of sufficient maintenance and encouragement to curates the cures have in several places been meanly supplied the bishop is therefore empowered to a point 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 not withstanding 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 and industrious workmen 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 laborers 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 directors of parishes to give them more than the wretched maintenance which they themselves might be willing to accept of it 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 laborers 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 benefits and other ecclesiastical dignities support the honor 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 recompense. 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 benefits will draw a sufficient number of learned, decent and respectable men into holy orders. In professions in which there are no benefits such as law and physics if an equal proportion of people were educated at the public expense the competition would soon be so great as to sink very much of 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 recompense to the entire degradation of the now respectable professions of law and physics. 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 labor to a very paltry recompense. Before the invention of the art of printing the only employment by which a man of letters could make anything 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 honorable 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 physics. 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 recompense 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 licenses 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. Asocrates in what is called his discourse against the office 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 menet. 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. Four menet were equal to 13 pounds, six shillings, and eight pence. Five menet to 16 pounds, 13 shillings, and four pence. Something not less than the largest of those two sums therefore must at that time have been usually paid to the most imminent teachers of Athens. Isocrates himself demanded 10 menet or 33 pounds, six shillings, and eight pence 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 menet or 3335 pound, six shillings, eight pence. A thousand menet 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. Georgius made a present to the temple of Delphi of his own statue in solid gold. We must not, I presume, suppose it was as large as the life. His way of living as well as that of Hippias and Protagoras to 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 a tutor to Alexander and most munificently rewarded as it is universally agreed, both by him and his father Philip thought it worthwhile 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 labor and the admiration of 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 Carniads the academic and diaginists 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. Carniads, 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 inconvenience. 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. End of Book 1, Chapter 10, Part 4. Part 5 of Chapter 10 of Book 1 of The Wealth of Nations. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephen Escalera. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Part 5 of Chapter 10 of Book 1 of wages and profit in the different employments of labor and stock. Thirdly, the policy of Europe by obstructing the free circulation of labor 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 labor from one employment to another, even in the same place. The exclusive privileges of corporations obstructed 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 consent 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 manufacturers may sometimes be in the same town and sometimes in the same neighborhood 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 manufacturers, 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 woolen is somewhat different, but the difference is so insignificant that either a linen or a silk weaver might become a tolerable workman in a few days. If any of those three capital manufacturers, therefore, were decaying, the workmen might find a resource in one of the others who, 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 manufacturer. The linen manufacturer, indeed, is in England by a particular statute open to everybody, but as it is not much cultivated through the greater part of the country, it can afford no general resource to the workmen of other decaying manufacturers who, wherever the statute of apprenticeship have no other choice but dither to come upon the parish or to work as common laborers, for which, by their habits, they are much worse qualified than for any sort of manufacturer that bears any resemblance to their own. They generally, therefore, choose to come upon the parish. Whatever obstructs the free circulation of labor 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 laborer 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 labor. 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 labor 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 labor 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 labor. It may be worthwhile 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 43rd of Elizabeth, C. II, 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 indispensable 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 belong. It was enacted, therefore, by the first of James II, that the forty days undisturbed residents 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 there being burdened by such intruders, it was further enacted by the third of William III that the forty days residents should be accounted only from the publication of such notice in writing on Sunday in the church immediately after divine service. After all, says Dr. Byrne, this kind of settlement by continuing forty days after publication 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 in paying them, the second by being elected into an annual parish office and serving it in a year, the third by serving an apprenticeship in the parish, the fourth 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 newcomer who has nothing but his labor 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 last two ways. An apprentice is scarce ever married and 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 labor 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 so ever at the caprice of any church warden or overseer, unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a year, a thing impossible for one who has nothing but his labor 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 all together 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 labor can give, and much greater security is frequently demanded. In order to restore in some measure that free circulation of labor which those different statutes had almost entirely taken away, the invention of certificates was fallen upon. By the eighth and ninth of William the third 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 twelfth of Queen Anne II stat one 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 labor which the preceding statutes had almost entirely taken away we may learn from the following very judicious observation of Dr. Byrne. It is obvious, says he, that there are diverse 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 whether to remove them and the parish shall be paid for the removal and for their maintenance in the meantime 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 a 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 behavior and certifies nothing but that the person belongs to the parish to which he really does belong it is altogether discretionary and the parish officers either to grant or to refuse it. A man Damus was once moved for, says Dr. Byrne, to compel the church wardens and overseers to sign a certificate. But the court of King's Bench rejected the notion as a very strange attempt. The very unequal price of labor 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 super abundance 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 neighborhood of a great town or wherever else there is an extraordinary demand for labor 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 neighboring 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 misdemeanor 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, suffer themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy. Though men of reflection, too, have sometimes complained of the law of settlements as they public grievance, yet it has never been the object of any general popular clamor, 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 errate 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 Dr. Byrne, it seems time to lay aside all endeavors 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 Eighth of George III prohibits, under heavy penalties, all master-tailers in London and five miles round it from giving and their workmen from accepting more than two shillings and seven pence half-penny a day, except in the case of a general morning. Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counselors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favor of the workmen, it is always just and equitable. But it is sometimes otherwise when in favor 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 favor of the workmen, but the eighth of George III is in favor 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 eighth 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 ableist 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 other goods. The size 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 inconvenience, 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, and the different employments of labor 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. End of Book 1, Chapter 10, Part 5. Part 1 of Chapter 11 of Book 1 of the Wealth of Nations. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Stephen Escalera. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. Part 1 of Chapter 11 of Book 1 of the Rent of the Land. Rent considered as the price paid for the use of land is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavors to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labor and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighborhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more. Whatever part of the produce or what is the same thing, whatever part of its price is over and above the share, he naturally endeavors to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. Sometimes indeed the liberality, more frequently the ignorance of the landlord, makes him accept of somewhat less than this portion and sometimes too, though more rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more or to content himself with somewhat less than the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighborhood. This portion, however, may still be considered as the natural rent of the land, or the rent at which it is naturally meant that land should, for the most part, be let. The rent of the land that may be thought is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions, for it can scarce ever be more than partly the case. The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent as if they had been all made by his own. He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human improvements. Kelp is a species of seaweed which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt useful for making glass, soap, and for several other purposes. It grows in several parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high watermark, which are twice every day covered with the sea, and of which the produce therefore was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as much as for his cornfields. The sea in the neighborhood of the islands of Shetland is more than commonly abundant in fish, which makes a great part of the subsistence of their inhabitants. But in order to profit by the produce of the water, they must have a habitation upon the neighboring land. The rent of the landlord is in proportion not to what the farmer can make by the land, but to what he can make both by the land and the water. It is partly paid in sea fish, and one of the very few instances in which rent makes a part of the price of that commodity is to be found in that country. The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportion to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land or to what he can afford to take, but to what the farmer can afford to give. Such parts only of the produce of land can commonly be brought to market, of which the ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock, which must be employed in bringing them thither, together with its ordinary profits. If the ordinary price is more than this, the surplus part of it will naturally go to the rent of the land. If it is not more, though the commodity may be brought to market, it can afford no rent to the landlord. Whether the price is or is not more, depends upon the demand. There are some parts of the produce of land for which the demand must always be such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to bring them to market, and there are others for which it either may or may not be such as to afford this greater price. The former must always afford a rent to the landlord. The latter sometimes may and sometimes may not according to different circumstances. Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit. High or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low price. High or low rent is the effect of it. It is because high or low wages and profits must be paid in order to bring a particular commodity to market that its price is high or low. But it is because its price is high or low a great deal more or very little more or no more than what is sufficient to pay those wages and profit that it affords a high rent or a low rent or no rent at all. The particular consideration, first, of those parts of the produce of land which always affords some rent, secondly, of those which sometimes may and sometimes may not afford rent, and thirdly, of the variations which in the different periods of improvement naturally take place in the relative value of those two different sorts of rude produce when compared both with one another and with manufactured commodities will divide this chapter into three parts. Part one of the produce of land which always affords rent. As men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always more or less in demand. It can always purchase or command a greater or smaller quantity of labor and somebody can always be found who is willing to do something in order to obtain it. The quantity of labor indeed which it can purchase is not always equal to what it could maintain if managed in the most economical manner on account of the high wages which are sometimes given to labor. But it can always purchase such a quantity of labor as it can maintain according to the rate at which that sort of labor is commonly maintained in the neighborhood. But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labor necessary for bringing it to market in the most liberal way in which that labor is ever maintained. The surplus, too, is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labor together with its profits. Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord. The most desert moors in Norway and Scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of which the milk and the increase are always more than sufficient, not only to maintain all the labor necessary for tending them and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or the owner of the herd or flock, but to afford some small rent to the landlord. The rent increases in proportion to the goodness of the pasture. The same extent of ground not only maintains a greater number of cattle, but as they are brought within a smaller compass, less labor becomes requisite to tend them and to collect their produce. The landlord gains both ways by the increase of the produce and by the diminution of the labor which must be maintained out of it. The rent of land not only varies with its fertility in whatever be its produce, but with its situation whatever be its fertility. Land in the neighborhood of a town gives a greater rent than land equally fertile in a distant part of the country. Though it may cost no more labor to cultivate the one than the other, it must always cost more to bring the produce of the distant land to market. A greater quantity of labor, therefore, must be maintained out of it and the surplus, from which are drawn both the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord, must be diminished. But in remote parts of the country, the rate of profit, as has already been shown, is generally higher than in the neighborhood of a large town. A smaller proportion of this diminished surplus, therefore, must belong to the landlord. Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers by diminishing the expense of carriage put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighborhood of the town. They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements. They encourage the cultivation of the remote, which must always be the most extensive circle of the country. They are advantageous to the town by breaking down the monopoly of the country in its neighborhood. They are advantageous even to that part of the country. Though they introduce some rival commodities into the old market, they open many new markets to its produce. Monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which can never be universally established, but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of self-defense. It is not more than fifty years ago that some of the counties in the neighborhood of London petitioned the Parliament against the extension of the Turnpike roads into the Remotor Counties. Those Remotor Counties, they pretended, from the cheapness of labor would be able to sell their grass and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and would thereby reduce their rents and ruin their cultivation. Their rents, however, have risen, and their cultivation has been improved since that time. A cornfield of moderate fertility produces a much greater quantity of food for man than the best pasture of equal extent. Though its cultivation requires much more labor, yet the surplus, which remains after replacing the seed and maintaining all that labor, is likewise much greater. If a pound of butchers meat therefore was never supposed to be worth more than a pound of bread, this greater surplus would everywhere be of greater value and constitute a greater fund, both for the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord. It seems to have done so universally in the rude beginnings of agriculture. But the relative values of those two different species of food, bread and butchers meat, are very different in the different periods of agriculture. In its rude beginnings the unimproved wilds, which then occupy the far greater part of the country, are all abandoned to cattle. There is more butchers meat than bread, and bread therefore is the food for which there is the greatest competition in which consequently brings the greatest price. At Buenos Aires we are told by Ulloa, four reels, one and twenty pence half penny sterling was, forty or fifty years ago, the ordinary price of an ox, chosen from a herd of two or three hundred. He says nothing of the price of bread, probably because he found nothing remarkable about it. An ox there, he says, costs little more than the labor of catching him. But corn can nowhere be raised without a great deal of labor, and in a country which lies upon the river plate, at that time the direct road from Europe to the silver mines of Potosi, the money price of labor could be very cheap. It is otherwise when cultivation is extended over the greater part of the country. There is then more bread than butchers meat. The competition changes its direction, and the price of butchers meat becomes greater than the price of bread. By the extension, besides of cultivation, the unimproved wilds become insufficient to supply the demand for butchers meat. A great part of the cultivated lands must be employed in rearing and fattening cattle, of which the price, therefore, must be sufficient to pay not only the labor necessary for tending them, but the rent which the landlord and the profit which the farmer could have drawn from such land employed in tillage. The cattle bred upon the most uncultivated moors when brought to the same market are in proportion to their weight or goodness sold at the same price as those which are reared upon the most improved land. The proprietors of those moors profit by it and raise the rent of their land in proportion to the price of their cattle. It is not more than a century ago that in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland butchers meat was as cheap or cheaper than even bread made of oatmeal. The Union opened the market of England to the Highland cattle. Their ordinary price at present is about three times greater than at the beginning of the century and the rents of many Highland estates had been tripled and quadrupled in the same time. In almost every part of Great Britain a pound of the best butchers meat is, in the present times, generally worth more than two pounds of the best white bread and in plentiful years it is sometimes worth three or four pounds. It is thus that in the progress of improvement the rent and profit of unimproved pasture comes to be regulated in some measure by the rent and profit of what is improved and these again by the rent and profit of corn. Corn is an annual crop. Butchers meat a crop which requires four or five years to grow. As an acre of land therefore will produce a much smaller quantity of the one species of food than of the other the inferiority of the quantity must be compensated by the superiority of the price. If it was more than compensated more corn land would be turned into pasture. And if it was not compensated part of what was in pasture would be brought back into corn. This equality however between the rent and profit of grass and those of corn of the land of which the immediate produce is food for cattle and of that of which the immediate produce is food for men must be understood to take place only through the greater part of the improved lands of a great country. In some particular local situations it is quite otherwise and the rent and profit of grass are much superior to what can be made by corn. Thus in the neighborhood of a great town the demand for milk and for forage to horses frequently contribute together with the high price of butchers meat to raise the value of grass above what may be called its natural proportion to that of corn. This local advantage it is evident cannot be communicated to the lands at a distance. Particular circumstances have sometimes rendered some countries so populous that the whole territory like the lands in the neighborhood of a great town has not been sufficient to produce both the grass and the corn necessary for the subsistence of their inhabitants. Their lands therefore have been principally employed in the production of grass the more bulky commodity in which cannot be so easily brought from a great distance and corn the food of the great body of the people has been chiefly imported from foreign countries. Holland is at present in this situation and a considerable part of ancient Italy seems to have been so during the prosperity of the Romans. To feed well, old Cato said, as we are told by Cicero, was the first and most profitable thing in the management of a private estate. To feed tolerably well the second and to feed ill the third. To plow he ranked only in the fourth place of profit and advantage. Tillage indeed in that part of ancient Italy, which lay in the neighborhood of Rome, must have been very much discouraged by the distributions of corn which were frequently made to the people, either gratuitously or at a very low price. This corn was brought from the conquered provinces of which several instead of taxes were obliged to furnish a tenth part of their produce at a stated price about six pence a peck to the republic. The low price at which this corn was distributed to the people must necessarily have sunk the price of what could be brought to the Roman market from Ladium or the ancient territory of Rome and must have discouraged its cultivation in that country. In an open country too of which the principal produce is corn, a well-enclosed piece of grass will frequently rent higher than any cornfield in its neighborhood. It is convenient for the maintenance of the cattle employed in the cultivation of the corn and its high rent is, in this case, not so properly paid from the value of its own produce as from that of the corn lands which are cultivated by means of it. It is likely to fall if ever the neighboring lands are completely enclosed. The present high rent of enclosed land in Scotland seems owing to the scarcity of enclosure and will probably last no longer than that scarcity. The advantage of enclosure is greater for pasture than for corn. It saves the labor of guarding the cattle which feed better too when they are not liable to be disturbed by their keeper or his dog. But where there is no local advantage of this kind, the rent and profit of corn or whatever else is the common vegetable food of the people must naturally regulate upon the land which is fit for producing it, the rent and profit of pasture. The use of the artificial grasses of turnips, carrots, cabbages, and the other expedients which have been fallen upon to make an equal quantity of land feed a greater number of cattle than when in natural grass should somewhat reduce, it might be expected, the superiority which, in an improved country, the price of butchers meat naturally has over that of bread. It seems accordingly to have done so, and there is some reason for believing that, at least in the London market, the price of butchers meat in proportion to the price of bread is a good deal lower in the present times than it was in the beginning of the last century. In the appendix to the life of Prince Henry, Dr. Birch has given us an account of the prices of butchers meat as commonly paid by that prince. It is there said that the four quarters of a nox, weighing 600 pounds, usually cost him 9 pounds, 10 shillings, or thereabouts. That is, 31 shillings and 8 pence per 100 pounds weight. Prince Henry died on the 6th of November, 1612, in the 19th year of his age. In March, 1764, there was a parliamentary inquiry into the causes of the high price of provisions at that time. It was then, among other proof to the same purpose, given in evidence by a Virginia merchant that in March, 1763, he had victualed his ships for 24 or 25 shillings the 100 weight of beef, which he considered as the ordinary price, whereas in that dear year he had paid 27 shillings for the same weight and sort. This high price in 1764 is, however, four shillings and 8 pence cheaper than the ordinary price paid by Prince Henry. And it is the best beef only it must be observed, which is fit to be salted for those distant voyages. The price paid by Prince Henry amounts to three pence, four-fifths per pound weight of the whole carcass, course and choice pieces taken together, and at that rate the choice pieces could not have been sold by retail for less than four-and-a-half pence or five pence the pound. In the parliamentary inquiry in 1764, the witnesses stated the price of the choice pieces of the best beef to be to the consumer four pence and four-and-a-half pence the pound, and the course pieces in general to be from seven farlings to two-and-a-half pence and two-and-three-quarter pence. And this, they said, was in general one-half penny dearer than the same sort of pieces had usually been sold in the month of March. But even this high price is still a good deal cheaper than what we can well suppose the ordinary retail price to have been in the time of Prince Henry. During the first 12 years of the last century, the average price of the best wheat at the Windsor Market was one pound, 18 shelling, three-and-a-half pence, the quarter of nine Winchester bushels. But in the 12 years preceding 1764, including that year, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same market was two pound, one shelling, nine-and-a-half pence. In the first 12 years of the last century, therefore, wheat appears to have been a good deal cheaper and butchers meet a good deal dearer than in the 12 years preceding 1764, including that year. In all great countries, the greater part of the cultivated lands are employed in producing either food for men or food for cattle. The rent and profit of these regulate the rent and profit of all other cultivated land. If any particular produce afforded less, the land would soon be turned into corn or pasture. And if any afforded more, some part of the lands in corn or pasture would soon be turned to that produce. Those productions, indeed, which require either a greater original expense of improvement or a greater annual expense of cultivation in order to fit the land for them, appear commonly to afford the one a greater rent the other a greater profit than corn or pasture. This superiority, however, will seldom be found to amount to more than a reasonable interest or compensation for this superior expense. In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent of the landlord and the profit of the farmer are generally greater than in acorn or grass field. But to bring the ground into this condition requires more expense. Hence, a greater rent becomes due to the landlord. It requires, too, a more attentive and skillful management. Hence, a greater profit becomes due to the farmer. The crop, too, at least in the hop and fruit garden is more precarious. Its price, therefore, besides compensating all occasional losses, must afford something like the profit of insurance. The circumstances of gardeners, generally mean and always moderate, may satisfy us that their great ingenuity is not commonly over-recompensed. Their delightful art is practiced by so many rich people for amusement that little advantage is to be made by those who practice it for profit. Because the persons who should naturally be their best customers supply themselves with all their most precious productions. The advantage which the landlord derives from such improvements seems at no time to have been greater than what was sufficient to compensate the original expense of making them. In the ancient husbandry, after the vineyard, a well-watered kitchen garden seems to have been the part of the farm which was supposed to yield the most valuable produce. But democratists, who rode upon husbandry about 2,000 years ago and who was regarded by the ancients as one of the fathers of the art, thought they did not act wisely who enclosed a kitchen garden. The prophet, he said, would not compensate the expense of a stone wall. And bricks, he meant, I suppose, bricks baked in the sun, moldered with the rain and the winter storm and required continual repairs. Colomella, who reports this judgment of democratists, does not controvert it, but proposes a very frugal method of enclosing with a hedge of brambles and briars, which he says he had found by experience to be both a lasting and an impenetrable fence. But which, it seems, was not commonly known in the time of democratists. Palladius adopts the opinion of Colomella, which had before been recommended by Vero. In the judgment of those ancient improvers, the produce of a kitchen garden had, it seems, been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary culture and the expense of watering. For in countries so near the sun, it was thought proper in those times as in the present to have the command of a stream of water, which could be conducted to every bed in the garden. Through the greater part of Europe, a kitchen garden is not at present supposed to deserve a better enclosure than that recommended by Colomella. In Great Britain and some other northern countries, the finer fruits cannot be brought to perfection but by the assistance of a wall. Their price, therefore, in such countries, must be sufficient to pay the expense of building and maintaining what they cannot be had without. The fruit wall frequently surrounds the kitchen garden, which thus enjoys the benefit of an enclosure which its own produce could sell them pay for. That the vineyard, when properly planted and brought to perfection, was the most valuable part of the farm, seems to have been an undoubted maxim in the ancient agriculture, as it is in the modern, through all the wine countries. But whether it was advantageous to plant a new vineyard was a matter of dispute among the ancient Italian husbandmen, as we learn from Colomella. He decides, like a true lover of all curious cultivation in favor of the vineyard, and endeavors to show by a comparison of the profit and expense that it was a most advantageous improvement. Such comparisons, however, between the profit and expense of new projects are commonly very fallacious and in nothing more so than in agriculture. Had the gain actually made by such plantations been commonly as great as he imagined it might have been, there could have been no dispute about it. The same point is frequently, at this day, a matter of controversy in the wine countries. Their riders on agriculture, indeed, the lovers and promoters of high cultivation, seem generally disposed to decide with Colomella in favor of the vineyard. In France, the anxiety of the proprietors of the old vineyards to prevent the planting of any new ones seems to favor their opinion and to indicate a consciousness of those who must have the experience that this species of cultivation is at present in that country more profitable than any other. It seems, at the same time, however, to indicate another opinion that this superior profit can last no longer than the laws which at present restrain the free cultivation of the vine. In 1731, they obtained an order of counsel prohibiting both the planting of new vineyards and the renewal of these old ones, of which the cultivation had been interrupted for two years without a particular permission from the king to be granted only in consequence of an information from the attendant of the province, certifying that he had examined the land and that it was incapable of any other culture. The pretense of this order was the scarcity of corn and pasture and the superabundance of wine, but had this superabundance been real, it would, without any order of counsel, have effectually prevented the plantation of new vineyards by reducing the profits of this species of cultivation below their natural proportion to those of corn and pasture. With regard to the supposed scarcity of corn, occasioned by the multiplication of vineyards, corn is nowhere in France more carefully cultivated than in the wine provinces, where the land is fit for producing it, as in Burgundy, Guine, and the upper Languedoc. The numerous hands employed in the one species of cultivation necessarily encourage the other by affording a ready market for its produce. To diminish the number of those who are capable of paying it is surely a most unpromising expedient for encouraging the cultivation of corn. It is like the policy which would promote agriculture by discouraging manufacturers. The rent and profit of those productions, therefore, which require either a great original expense of improvement in order to fit the land for them or a greater annual expense of cultivation, though often much superior to those of corn and pasture, yet when they do know more than compensate such extraordinary expense are in reality regulated by the rent and profit of those common crops. It sometimes happens, indeed, that the quantity of land which can be fitted for some particular produce is too small to supply the effectual demand. The whole produce can be disposed of to those who are willing to give somewhat more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages and profit necessary for raising and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates or according to the rates at which they are paid in the greater part of other cultivated land. The surplus part of the price which remains after defraying the whole expense of improvement and cultivation may commonly, in this case and in this case only, bear no regular proportion to the like surplus in corn or pasture, but may exceed it in almost any degree and the greater part of this excess naturally goes to the rent of the landlord. The usual and natural proportion, for example, between the rent and profit of wine and those of corn and pasture must be understood to take place only with regard to those vineyards which produce nothing but good common wine, such as can be raised almost anywhere upon any light, gravelly or sandy soil, and which has nothing to recommend it, but its strength and wholesomeness. It is with such vineyards only that the common land of the country can be brought into competition, for with those of a peculiar quality it is evident that it cannot. The vine is more affected by the difference of soils than any other fruit tree. For some, it derives a flavor which no culture or management can equal. It is supposed upon any other. This flavor, real or imaginary, is sometimes peculiar to the produce of a few vineyards. Sometimes it extends through the greater part of a small district and sometimes through a considerable part of a large province. The whole quantity of such wines that is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand or the demand of those who would be willing to pay the whole rent, profit, and wages necessary for preparing and bringing them thither, according to the ordinary rate or according to the rate at which they are paid in common vineyards. The whole quantity, therefore, can be disposed of to those who are willing to pay more, which necessarily raises their prices above that of common wine. The difference is greater or less according as the fashionness and scarcity of the wine render the competition of the buyers more or less eager. Whatever it be, the greater part of it goes to the rent of a landlord. For those such vineyards are in general more carefully cultivated than most others, the high price of the wine seems to be not so much the effect as the cause of this careful cultivation. And so valuable a produce, the loss occasioned by negligence is so great as to force even the most careless to attention. A small part of this high price, therefore, is sufficient to pay the wages of the extraordinary labor bestowed upon their cultivation and the profits of the extraordinary stock which puts that labor into motion. The sugar colonies possessed by the European nations in the West Indies may be compared to those precious vineyards. Their whole produce falls short of the effectual demand of Europe and can be disposed of to those who are willing to give more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, profit, and wages necessary for preparing and bringing it to market according to the rate at which they are commonly paid by any other produce. In Cochin, China, the finest white sugar generally sells for three piaustras, the quintal, about 13 shelling and six pence of our money. As we are told by Mr. Puave, a very careful observer of the agriculture of that country, what is there called the quintal weighs from 150 to 200 Paris pounds or 175 Paris pounds at a medium which reduces the price of the 100 weight English to about 8 shelling sterling. Not a fourth part of what is commonly paid for the brown or muscovata sugars imported from our colonies and not a sixth part of what is paid for the finest white sugar. The greater part of the cultivated lands in Cochin, China are employed in producing corn and rice, the food of the great body of the people. The respective prices of corn, rice and sugar are there probably in the natural proportion or in that which naturally takes place in the different crops of the greater part of the cultivated land and which recompenses the landlord and farmer as nearly as can be computed according to what is usually the original expense of improvement and the annual expense of cultivation. But in our sugar colonies the price of sugar bears no such proportion to that of the produce of a rice or corn field either in Europe or America. It is commonly said that a sugar planter expects that the rum and the molasses should defray the whole expense of his cultivation and that his sugar should be all clear profit. If this be true, for I pretend not to affirm it, it is as if a corn farmer expected to defray the expense of his cultivation with the chaff and the straw and that the grain should be all clear profit. We see frequently societies and merchants in London and other trading towns purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit by means of factors and agents not withstanding the great distance and the uncertain returns from the defective administration of justice in those countries. Nobody will attempt to improve and cultivate in the same manner the most fertile lands of Scotland, Ireland or the corn provinces of North America though from the more exact administration of justice in these countries more regular returns might be expected. In Virginia and Maryland the cultivation of tobacco is preferred as most profitable to that of corn. Tobacco might be cultivated with advantage through the greater part of Europe but in almost every part of Europe it has become a principal subject of taxation and to collect attacks from every different farm in the country where this plant might happen to be cultivated would be more difficult it has been supposed than to levy one upon its importation at the custom house. The cultivation of tobacco has upon this account been most absurdly prohibited through the greater part of Europe which necessarily gives a sort of monopoly to the countries where it is allowed and as Virginia and Maryland produce the greatest quantity of it they share largely though with some competitors in the advantage of this monopoly. The cultivation of tobacco however seems not to be so advantageous as that of sugar. I have never even heard of any tobacco plantation that was improved and cultivated by the capital of merchants who resided in Great Britain and our tobacco colonies send us home no such wealthy planters as we see frequently arrive from our sugar islands. Though from the preference given in those colonies to the cultivation of tobacco above that of corn it would appear that the effectual demand of Europe for tobacco is not completely supplied. It probably is more nearly so than that for sugar and though the present price of tobacco is probably more than sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages and profit necessary for preparing and bringing it to market according to the rate at which they are commonly paid in cornland it must not be so much more as the present price of sugar. Our tobacco planters accordingly have shown the same fear of the super abundance of tobacco which the proprietors of the old vineyards in France have of the super abundance of wine. By act of assembly they have restrained its cultivation to 6,000 plants supposed to yield a thousand weight of tobacco for every negro between 16 and 60 years of age. Such a negro over and above this quantity of tobacco can manage they reckon four acres of Indian corn. To prevent the market from being overstocked to they have sometimes in plentiful years we are told by Dr. Douglas I suspect he has been ill-informed burnt a certain quantity of tobacco for every negro in the same manner as the Dutch are said to do of spices. If such violent methods are necessary to keep up the present price of tobacco the superior advantage of its culture over that of corn if it still has any will not probably be of long continuance. It is in this manner that the rent of the cultivated land of which the produce is human food regulates the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land. No particular produce can long afford less because the land would immediately be turned to another use and if any particular produce commonly affords more it is because the quantity of land which can be fitted for it is too small to supply the effectual demand. In Europe corn is the principal produce of land which serves immediately for human food except in particular situations therefore the rent of corn land regulates in Europe that of all other cultivated land. Britain need envy neither the vineyards of France nor the olive plantations of Italy. Except in particular situations the value of these is regulated by that of corn in which the fertility of Britain is not much inferior to that of either of those two countries. If in any country the common and favorite vegetable food of the people should be drawn from a plant of which the most common land with the same or nearly the same culture produced a much greater quantity than the most fertile does of corn the rent of the landlord or the surplus quantity of food which would remain to him after paying the labor and replacing the stock of the farmer together with its ordinary profits would necessarily be much greater. Whatever was the rate at which labor was commonly maintained in that country this greater surplus could always maintain a greater quantity of it and consequently enable the landlord to purchase or command a greater quantity of it. The real value of his rent his real power and authority his command of the necessaries and conveniences of life with which the labor of other people could supply him would necessarily be much greater. A rice field produces a much greater quantity of food than the most fertile cornfield. Two crops in the year from thirty to sixty bushels each are said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. Though its cultivation therefore requires more labor a much greater surplus remains after maintaining all that labor. In those countries therefore where rice is the common and favorite vegetable food of the people and where the cultivators are chiefly maintained with it a greater share of this greater surplus should belong to the landlord than in corn countries. In Carolina where the planters as in other British colonies are generally both farmers and landlords and where rent consequently is confounded with profit the cultivation of rice is found to be more profitable than that of corn though their fields produce only one crop in the year and though from the prevalence of the customs of Europe rice is not there the common and favorite vegetable food of the people. A good rice field is a bog at all seasons and at one season a bog covered with water it is unfit either for corn or pasture or vineyard or indeed for any other vegetable produce that is very useful to men and the lands which are fit for those purposes are not fit for rice. Even in the rice countries therefore the rent of rice lands cannot regulate the rent of the other cultivated land which can never be turned to that produce. The food produced by a field of potatoes is not inferior in quantity to that produced by a field of rice and much superior to what is produced by a field of wheat. Twelve thousand weight of potatoes from an acre of land is not a greater produce than two thousand weight of wheat. The food or solid nourishment indeed which can be drawn from each of those two plants is not altogether in proportion to their weight on account of the watery nature of potatoes. Allowing however half the weight of water a very large allowance such an acre of potatoes will still produce six thousand weight of solid nourishment three times the quantity produced by the acre of wheat. An acre of potatoes is cultivated with less expense than an acre of wheat. The fallow which generally precedes the sowing of wheat more than compensating the hoeing and other extraordinary culture which is always given to potatoes. Should this root ever become in any part of Europe like rice in some rice countries the common and favored vegetable food of the people has to occupy the same proportion of the lands in tillage which wheat and other sorts of grain for human food do at present the same quantity of cultivated land would maintain a much greater number of people and the laborers being generally fed with potatoes a greater surplus would remain after replacing all the stock and maintaining all the labor employed in cultivation. A greater share of this surplus too would belong to the landlord. Population would increase and the rents would rise much beyond what they are at present. The land which is fit for potatoes is fit for almost every other useful vegetable. If they occupy the same proportion of cultivated land which corn does at present they would regulate in the same manner the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land. In some parts of Lancashire it is pretended I have been told that bread of oatmeal is a heartier food for laboring people than wheat and bread and I have frequently heard the same doctrine held in Scotland. I am however somewhat doubtful of the truth of it. The common people in Scotland who are fed with oatmeal are in general neither so strong nor so handsome as the same rank of people in England who are fed with wheat and bread. They neither work so well nor look so well and as there is not the same difference between the people of fashion in the two countries experience would seem to show that the food of the common people in Scotland is not so suitable to the human constitution as that of their neighbors of the same rank in England. But it seems to be otherwise with potatoes. The chairman, porters and coal heavers in London and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions are said to be the greater part of them from the lowest rank of people in Ireland who are generally fed with this route. No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution. It is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year and impossible to store them like corn for two or three years together. The fear of not being able to sell them before they rot discourages their cultivation and is perhaps the chief obstacle to their ever becoming in any great country like bread the principal food of all the different ranks of the people. End of Book 1, Chapter 11, Part 1.