X.

caying manufacture, on the contrary, many workmen, rather CHA P. than quit their old trade, are contented with fmaller wages than would otherwise be fuitable 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 rifes above the ordinary or average rate, the profits of at least some part of the ftock that is employed in bringing it to market, rife above their proper level, and as it falls they fink below it. All commodities are more or less liable to variations of price, but fome are much more so than others. In all commodities which are produced by human induftry, the quantity of induftry annually employed is neceffarily regulated by the annual demand, in such a manner that the average annual produce may, as nearly as poffible, be equal to the average annual confumption. In fome employments, it has already been obferved, the fame quantity of in-dustry will always produce the fame, or very nearly the fame quantity of commodities. In the linen or woollen manufactures, for example, the fame number of hands will annually work up very nearly the fame quantity of linen and woollen cloth. The variations in the market price of fuch commodities, therefore, can arise only from fome accidental variation in the demand. A publick mourning raises the price of black cloth. But as the demand for moft forts of plain linen and woollen cloth is pretty uniform, fo is likewife the price. But there are other employments in which the fame quantity of industry will not always produce the fame quantity of commodities. The fame quantity of industry, for example, will, in different years, produce very different quantities of corn, wine, hops, fugar, tobacco, &c. The price of fuch commodities, therefore, varies not only with the variations of demand, but with the much greater and more frequent variations of quantity, and is confequently extremely fluctuating. But the profit of fome of the dealers must

neceffarily

I.

BOO neceffarily fluctuate with the price of the commodities. The operations of the speculative merchant are principally employed about fuch commodities. He endeavours to buy them up when he forefees that their price is likely to rife, and to fell them when it is likely to fall.

THIRDLY, This equality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and ftock, can take place only in fuch as are the fole or principal employments of those who оссиру them.

WHEN a perfon derives his fubfiftence from one employment, which does not occupy the greater part of his time; in the intervals of his leifure he is often willing to work at another for less wages than would otherwise fuit the nature of the employ

ment.

THERE ftill fubfifts in many parts of Scotland a set of people called Cotters or Cottagers, though they were more frequent fome years ago than they are now. They are a fort of out-fervants of the landlords and farmers. The ufual reward which they receive from their mafters is a houfe, a fmall garden for pot-herbs, as much grafs as will feed a cow, and, perhaps, an acre or two of bad arable land. When their mafter has occafion for their labour, he gives them, besides, two pecks of oatmeal a week, worth about fixteen-pence fterling. During a great part of the year he has little or no occafion for their labour, and the cultivation of their own little poffeffion is not fufficient to occupy the time which is left at their own difpofal. When fuch occupiers were more numerous than they are at present, they are said to have been willing to give their spare time for a very small recompence to any body, and to have wrought for lefs wages than other labourers. In an

In CHAP.

tient times they feem to have been common all over Europe. countries ill cultivated and worfe inhabited, the greater part of landlords and farmers could not otherwise provide themselves with the extraordinary number of hands, which country labour requires at certain feafons. The daily or weekly recompence which fuch labourers occafionally received from their mafters, was evidently not the whole price of their labour. Their small tenement made a confiderable part of it. This daily or weekly recompence, however, seems to have been confidered as the whole of it, by many writers who have collected the prices of labour and provisions in antient times, and who have taken pleasure in representing both as wonderfully low.

THE produce of fuch labour comes frequently cheaper to market than would otherwise be fuitable to its nature. Stockings in many parts of Scotland are knit much cheaper than they can any where be wrought upon the loom. They are the work of fervants and labourers, who derive the principal part of their fubfiftence from fome other employment. More than a thousand pair of Shetland stockings are annually imported into Leith, of which the price. is from five-pence to feven-pence a pair. At Learwick, the fmall capital of the Shetland islands, ten-pence a day, I have been asfured, is a common price of common labour. In the fame islands they knit worsted stockings to the value of a guinea a pair and upwards.

THE fpinning of linen yarn is carried on in Scotland nearly in the fame way as the knitting of stockings, by fervants who, are chiefly hired for other purposes. They earn but a very scanty subfiftence, who endeavour to get their whole livelihood by either of thofe trades. In most parts of Scotland fhe is a good fpinner who can earn twenty-pence a week.

VOL. I.

U

IN

X.

BOOK

I.

IN opulent countries the market is generally fo extenfive, that any one trade is fufficient to employ the whole labour and ftock of those who occupy it. Inftances of people's living by one employment, and at the fame time deriving fome little advantage from another, occur chiefly in poor countries. The following inftance, however, of fomething of the fame kind is to be found in the capital of a very rich one. à There is no city in Europe, I believe, in which house-rent is dearer than in London, and yet I know no capital in which a furnished apartment can be hired fo cheap. Lodging is not only much cheaper in London than in Paris; it is much cheaper than in Edinburgh of the fame 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 arifes, not only from thofe caufes which render it dear in all great capitals, the dearness of labour, the dearnefs of all the materials of building, which muft generally be brought from a great distance, and above all the dearnefs of ground-rent, every landlord acting the part of a monopolist, and frequently exacting a higher rent for a single acre of bad land in a town, than can be had for a hundred of the best in the country; but it arifes in part from the peculiar manners and cuftoms of the people, which oblige every mafter of a family to hire a whole houfe from top to bottom. A dwelling-house in England means every thing that is contained under the fame roof. In France, Scotland, and many other parts of Europe, it frequently means no more than a single ftory. A tradefman in London is obliged to hire a whole house in that part of the town where his cuftomers live. His fhop is upon the groundfloor, and he and his family fleep in the garret; and he endeavours to pay a part of his houfe-rent by letting the two middle ftories to lodgers. He expects to maintain his family by his trade, and not by his lodgers. Whereas, at Paris and Edinburgh, the people who let lodgings, have commonly no other means of subsistence;

X.

and the price of the lodging muft pay, not only the rent of the CHA P. house, but the whole expence of the family.

PART II.

Inequalities occafioned by the Policy of Europe.

UCH are the inequalities in the whole of the advantages and

SUCH

disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, which the defect of any of the three requifites above mentioned muft occafion, even where there is the most perfect liberty. But the policy of Europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty, occafions other inequalities of much greater importance.

Ir does this chiefly in the three following ways. First, by reftraining the competition in fome employments to a smaller number than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them; fecondly, by increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and, thirdly, by obftructing the free circulation of labour and ftock, both from employment to employment and from place to place.

FIRST, The policy of Europe occafions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and ftock, by reftraining the competition in fome employments to a smaller number than might otherwise be difpofed to enter into them.

THE exclufive privileges of corporations are the principal means. it makes ufe of for this purpose.

THE exclufive privilege of an incorporated trade neceffarily restrains the competition, in the town where it is established, to