farmier, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year, without employment. In the long run, the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate. subsistence, generally end in nothing but the punishment or ruin of the ringleaders. But though, in disputes with their work. men, masters must generally have the advan tage, there is, however, a certain rate, below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour. A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to main We rarely hear, it has been said, of the tain him. They must even upon most occacombinations of masters, though frequently of sions be somewhat more, otherwise it would those of workmen. But whoever imagines, be impossible for him to bring up a family, upon this account, that masters rarely com- and the race of such workmen could not last bine, is as ignorant of the world as of the sub- beyond the first generation. Mr Cantillon ject. Masters are always and everywhere in seems, upon this account, to suppose that the a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, com- lowest species of common labourers must bination, not to raise the wages of labour a- everywhere earn at least double their own bove their actual rate. To violate this com- maintenance, in order that, one with another, bination is everywhere a most unpopular ac- they may be enabled to bring up two childtion, and a sort of reproach to a master among ren; the labour of the wife, on account of his neighbours and equals. We seldom, in- her necessary attendance on the children, be deed, hear of this combination, because it is ing supposed no more than sufficient to prothe usual, and, one may say, the natural state vide for herself. But one half the children of things, which nobody ever hears of. Mas-born, it is computed, die before the age of ters, too, sometimes enter into particular com- manhood. The poorest labourers, therefore, binations to sink the wages of labour even be according to this account, must, one with low this rate. These are always conducted another, attempt to rear at least four children, with the utmost silence and secrecy till the in order that two may have an equal chance moment of execution; and when the work- of living to that age. But the necessary men yield, as they sometimes do without re- maintenance of four children, it is supposed, sistance, though severely felt by them, they may be nearly equal to that of one man. The are never heard of by other people. Such labour of an able-bodied slave, the same combinations, however, are frequently resisted author adds, is computed to be worth double by a contrary defensive combination of the his maintenance; and that of the meanest laworkmen, who sometimes, too, without any bourer, he thinks, cannot be worth less than provocation of this kind, combine, of their that of an able-bodied slave. Thus far at own accord, to raise the price of their labour.least seems certain, that, in order to bring up Their usual pretences are, sometimes the high a family, the labour of the husband and wife price of provisions, sometimes the great profit together must, even in the lowest species of which their masters make by their work. But common labour, be able to earn something whether their combinations be offensive or de- more than what is precisely necessary for their fensive, they are always abundantly heard of. own maintenance; but in what proportion, In order to bring the point to a speedy deci- whether in that above-mentioned, or in any sion, they have always recourse to the loudest other, I shall not take upon me to determine. clamour, and sometimes to the most shocking There are certain circumstances, however, violence and outrage. They are desperate, which sometimes give the labourers an ad. and act with the folly and extravagance of vantage, and enable them to raise their wages desperate men, who must either starve, or considerably above this rate, evidently the frighten their masters into an immediate com- lowest which is consistent with common hu pliance with their demands. The masters, manity. upon these occasions, are just as clamorous When in any country the demand for those upon the other side, and never cease to call who live by wages, labourers, journeymen, aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, servants of every kind, is continually increas and the rigorous execution of those laws which ing; when every year furnishes employment have been enacted with so much severity a- for a greater number than had been employed gainst the combination of servants, labourers, the year before, the workmen have no occaand journeymen. The workmen, according- sion to combine in order to raise their wages. ly, very seldom derive any advantage from the The scarcity of hands occasions a competition violence of those tumultuous combinations, among masters, who bid against one another which, partly from the interposition of the in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily civil magistrate, partly from the superior stea- break through the natural combination of masdiness of the masters, partly from the necessiters not to raise wages. ty which the greater part of the workmen are The demand for those who live by wages, under of submitting for the sake of present it is evident, cannot increase but in propor ་ If the tion to the increase of the funds which are selves, though less for exportation. destined to the payment of wages. These money price of labour, therefore, be higher 'funds are of two kinds, first, the revenue than it is anywhere in the mother-country, which is over and above what is necessary for the maintenance; and, secondly, the stock which is over and above what is necessary for the employment of their masters. When the landlord, annuitant, or monied mar, has a greater revenue than what he judges sufficient to maintain his own family, he employs either the whole or a part of the surplus in maintaining one or more menial servants. Increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of those ser vants. its real price, the real command of the neces saries and conveniencies of life which it conveys to the labourer, must be higher in a stili greater proportion. But though North America is not yet so rich as England, it is much more thriving, and advancing with much greater rapidity to the further acquisition of riches. The most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants. In Great Britain, and most other European countries, they are not supWhen an independent workman, such as a posed to double in less than five hundred weaver or shoemaker, has got more stock years. In the British colonies in North than what is sufficient to purchase the mate- America, it has been found that they double rials of his own work, and to maintain him- in twenty or five-and-twenty years. Nor in self till he can dispose of it, he naturally employs one or more journeymen with the surplus, in order to make a profit by their work. Increase this surplus, and he will naturally increase the number of his journeymen. The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, necessarily increases with the increase of the revenue and stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase without it. The increase of revenue and stock is the increase of national wealth. The demand for those who live by wages, therefore, naturally increases with the increase of national wealth, and cannot possibly increase without it. the present times is this increase principally owing to the continual importation of new inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of the species. Those who live to old age, it is said, frequently see there from fifty to a hund red, and sometimes many more, descendents from their own body. Labour is there so well rewarded, that a numerous family of children, instead of being a burden, is a source of opulence and prosperity to the parents. The labour of each child, before it can leave their house, is computed to be worth a hundred pounds clear gain to them. A young widow with four or five young children, who, It is not the actual greatness of national among the middling or inferior ranks of peowealth, but its continual increase, which ocple in Europe, would have so little chance for casions a rise in the wages of labour. It is a second husband, is there frequently courted not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but as a sort of fortune. The value of children is in the most thriving, or in those which are the greatest of all encouragements to marriage. growing rich the fastest, that the wages of la- We cannot, therefore, wonder that the people bour are highest. England is certainly, in in North America should generally marry the present times, a much richer country than very young. Notwithstanding the great in any part of North America. The wages of crease occasioned by such early marriages, labour, however, are much higher in North there is a continual complaint of the scarcity America than in any part of England. In of hands in North America. The demand the province of New York, common labourers for labourers, the funds destined for mainearn three shillings and sixpence currency, taining them increase, it seems, still faster equal to two shillings sterling, a-day; ship- than they can find labourers to employ. carpenters, ten shillings and sixpence curren-! Though the wealth of a country should be cy, with a pint of rum, worth sixpence ster- very great, yet if it has been long stationary, ling, equal in all to six shillings and sixpence we must not expect to find the wages of lasterling; house-carpenters and bricklayers, bour very high in it. The funds destined for eight shillings currency, equal to four shill- the payment of wages, the revenue and stock ings and sixpence sterling; journeymen tai- of its inhabitants, may be of the greatest exlors, five shillings currency, equal to about tent; but if they have continued for several two shillings and tenpence sterling. These centuries of the same, or very nearly of the prices are all above the London price; and same extent, the number of labourers employwages are said to be as high in the other colo- ed every year could easily supply, and ever nies as in New York. The price of provi- more than supply, the number wanted the sions is every where in North America much following year. There could seldom be any lower than in England. A dearth has never scarcity of hands, nor could the masters be In the worst seasons obliged to bid against one another in order to they have always had a sufficiency for them- get them. The hands, on the contrary, would, in this case, naturally multiply beyond their employment. There would be a constant scarcity of employment, and the labourers been known there. This was written in 1773, before the commencement of the late disturbances. would be obliged to bid against one another lowest class of labourers, therefore, notwithin order to get it. If in such a country the standing their scanty subsistence, must some wages of labour had ever been more than suf-way or another make shift to continue their ficient to maintain the labourer, and to enable race so far as to keep up their usual numbers. him to bring up a family, the competition of But it would be otherwise in a country the labourers and the interest of the masters where the funds destined for the maintenance would soon reduce them to the lowest rate of labcur were sensibly decaying. Every year which is consistent with common humanity. the demand for servants and labourers would, China has been long one of the richest, that in all the different classes of employments, be is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, less than it had been the year before. Many most industrious, and most populous, coun- who had been bred in the superior classes, not tries in the world. It seems, however, to have being able to find employment in their own been long stationary. Marco Polo, who vi- business, would be glad to seek it in the lowsited it more than five hundred years ago, de-est. The lowest class being not only overscribes its cultivation, industry, and poplous-stocked with its own workmen, but with the ness, almost in the same terms in which they overflowings of all the other classes, the comare described by travellers in the present petition for employment would be so great in times. It had, perhaps, even long before his it, as to reduce the wages of labour to the time, acquired that full complement of riches, most miserable and scanty subsistence of the which the nature of its laws and institutions labourer. Many would not be able to find permits it to acquire. The accounts of all employment even upon these hard terms, but travellers, inconsistent in many other respects, would either starve, or be driven to seek a subagree in the low wages of labour, and in the sistence, either by begging, or by the perpetra. difficulty which a labourer finds in bringing tion, perhaps, of the greatest enormities. Want, up a family in China. If by digging the famine, and mortality, would immediately preground a whole day he can get what will pur- vail in that class, and from thence extend themchase a small quantity of rice in the evening, selves to all the superior classes, till the numbe he is contented. The condition of artificers of inhabitants in the country was reduced to is, if possible, still worse. Instead of waiting what could easily be maintained by the reveindolently in their work-houses for the calls nue and stock which remained in it, and which of their customers, as in Europe, they are had escaped either the tyranny or calamity continually running about the streets with the which had destroyed the rest. This, perhaps, tools of their respective trades, offering their is nearly the present state of Bengal, and of services, and, as it were, begging employment. some other of the English settlements in the The poverty of the lower ranks of people in East Indies. In a fertile country, which had China far surpasses that of the most beggarly before been much depopulated, where subnations in Europe. In the neighbourhood sistence, consequently, should not be very difof Canton, many hundred, it is commonly ficult, and where, notwithstanding, three or said, many thousand families have no habita- four hundred thousand people die of hunger tion on the land, but live constantly in little in one year, we may be assured that the funds fishing-boats upon the rivers and canals. destined for the maintenance of the labouring The subsistence which they find there is so poor are fast decaying. The difference be scanty, that they are eager to fish up the nas-tween the genius of the British constitution, tiest garbage thrown overboard from any Eu- which protects and governs North America, ropean ship. Any carrion, the carcase of a and that of the mercantile company which op dead dog or cat, for example, though half pu- presses and domineers in the East Indies, trid and stinking, is as welcome to them as cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the most wholesome food to the people of the different state of those countries. other countries. Marriage is encouraged in The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as China, not by the profitableness of children, it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural but by the liberty of destroying them. In symptom of increasing national wealth. The all great towns, several are every night expos- scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on ed in the street, or drowned like puppies in the other hand, is the natural symptom that the water. The performance of this horrid things are at a stand, and their starving conoffice is even said to be the avowed business dition, that they are going fast backwards. by which some people earn their subsistence. In Great Britain, the wages of labour seem, China, however, though it may, perhaps, in the present times, to be evidently more stand still, does not seem to go backwards. than what is precisely necessary to enable the Its towns are nowhere deserted by their inha- labourer to bring up a family. In order to bitants. The lands which had once been cul- satisfy ourselves upon this point, it will not tivated, are nowhere neglected. The same, be necessary to enter into any tedious of or very nearly the sarne, annual labour, must, doubtful calculation of what may be the lowtherefore, continue to be performed, and the est sum upon which it is possible to do this. funds destined for maintaining it must not, There are many plain symptoms, that the consequently, be sensibly diminished. The wages of labour are nowhere in this country regulated by this lowest rate, which is con-usual price of common labour through the sistent with common humanity. greater part of the low country of Scotland, First, in almost every part of Great Britain where it varies a good deal less than in Eng. there is a distinction, even in the lowest spe-land. Such a difference of prices, which, it cies of labour, between summer and winter seems, is not always sufficient to transport a wages. Summer wages are always highest. man from one parish to another, would necesBut, on account of the extraordinary expense sarily occasion so great a transportation of the of fuel, the maintenance of a family is most most bulky commodities, not only from one expensive in winter. Wages, therefore, being parish to another, but from one end of the king. highest when this expense is lowest, it seems dom, almost from one end of the world to the evident that they are not regulated by what other, as would soon reduce them more nearly is necessary for this expense, but by the quan- to a level. After all that has been said of the tity and supposed value of the work. A la- levity and inconstancy of human nature, it bourer, it may be said, indeed, ought to save appears evidently from experience, that man part of his summer wages, in order to defray is, of all sorts of luggage, the most difficult to his winter expense; and that, through the be transported. If the labouring poor, therewhole year, they do not exceed what is neces-fore, can maintain their families in those parts sary to maintain his family through the whole of the kingdom where the price of labour is A slave, however, or one absolutely lowest, they must be in affluence where it is dependent on us for immediate subsistence, would not be treated in this manner. His daily subsistence would be proportioned to his daily necessities. year. highest. Fourthly, the variations in the price of labour not only do not correspond, either in place or time, with those in the price of provisions, but they are frequently quite opposite. Secondly, the wages of labour do not, in Great Britain, fluctuate with the price of pro- Grain, the food of the common people, is visions. These vary everywhere from year to dearer in Scotland than in England, whence year, frequently from month to month. But Scotland receives almost every year very large in many places, the money price of labour re-supplies. But English corn must be sold mains uniformly the same, sometimes for half dearer in Scotland, the country to which it is a century together. If, in these places, there- brought, than in England, the country from fore, the labouring poor can maintain their fa- which it comes; and in proportion to its quamilies in dear years, they must be at their ease lity it cannot be sold dearer in Scotland than in times of moderate plenty, and in affluence the Scotch corn that comes to the same mar. in those of extraordinary cheapness. The high ket in competition with it. The quality of price of provisions during these ten years past, has not, in many parts of the kingdom, been accompanied with any sensible rise in the money price of labour. It has, indeed, in some; owing, probably, more to the increase of the demand for labour, than to that of the price of provisions. grain depends chiefly upon the quantity of flour or meal which it yields at the mill; and, in this respect, English grain is so much superior to the Scotch, that though often dearer in appearance, or in proportion to the measure of its bulk, it is generally cheaper in reality, or in proportion to its quality, or even to the Thirdly, as the price of provisions varies measure of its weight. The price of labour, more from year to year than the wages of la- on the contrary, is dearer in England than in bour, so, on the other hand, the wages of la- Scotland. If the labouring poor, therefore, Dour vary more from place to place than the can maintain their families in the one part of price of provisions. The prices of bread and the united kingdom, they must be in affluence butchers' meat are generally the same, or very in the other. Oatmeal, indeed, supplies the nearly the same, through the greater part of common people in Scotland with the greatest the united kingdom. These, and most other and the best part of their food, which is, in things which are sold by retail, the way in general, much inferior to that of their neighwhich the labouring poor buy all things, are bours of the same rank in England. This generally fully as cheap, or cheaper, in great difference, however, in the mode of their subtowns than in the remoter parts of the coun-sistence, is not the cause, but the effect, of try, for reasons which I shall have occasion to the difference in their wages; though, by a explain hereafter. But the wages of labour strange misapprehension, I have frequently in a great town and its neighbourhood, are heard it represented as the cause. It is not frequently a fourth or a fifth part, twenty or because one man keeps a coach, while his five-and-twenty per cent. higher thau at a few neighbour walks a-foot, that the one is rich, nules distance. Eighteen pence a day may and the other poor; but because the one is be reckoned the common price of labour in rich, he keeps a coach, and because the other London and its neighbourhood. At a few is poor, he walks a-foot. miles distance, it falls to fourteen and fifteen During the course of the last century, takpence. Tenpence may be reckoned its price ing one year with another, grain was dearer in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood. At a in both parts of the united kingdom than durfew miles distance, it falls to eightpence, the ing that of the present. This is a matter of fact which cannot now admit of any reason-subject *. In 1688, Mr Gregory King, whose * See his scheme for the maintenance of the poor, |