An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

of the last century, taking one year with another, grain

was dearer in both parts of the united kingdom than during that of the

present. This is a matter of fact which cannot now admit of any reasonable

doubt ; and the proof of it is, if possible, still more decisive with regard

to Scotland than with regard to England. It is in Scotland supported by the

evidence of the public fiars, annual valuations made upon oath, according to

the actual state of the markets, of all the different sorts of grain in

every different county of Scotland. If such direct proof could require any

collateral evidence to confirm it, I would observe, that this has likewise

been the case in France, and probably in most other parts of Europe. With

regard to France, there is the clearest proof. But though it is certain,

that in both parts of the united kingdom grain was somewhat dearer in the

last century than in the present, it is equally certain that labour was much

cheaper. If the labouring poor, therefore, could bring up their families

then, they must be much more at their ease now. In the last century, the

most usual day-wages of common labour through the greater part of Scotland

were sixpence in summer, and fivepence in winter. Three shillings a-week,

the same price, very nearly still continues to be paid in some parts of the

Highlands and Western islands. Through the greater part of the Low country,

the most usual wages of common labour are now eight pence a-day ; tenpence,

sometimes a shilling, about Edinburgh, in the counties which border upon

England, probably on account of that neighbourhood, and in a few other

places where there has lately been a considerable rise in the demand for

labour, about Glasgow, Carron, Ayrshire, etc. In England, the improvements

of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, began much earlier than in

Scotland. The demand for labour, and consequently its price, must

necessarily have increased with those improvements. In the last century,

accordingly, as well as in the present, the wages of labour were higher in

England than in Scotland. They have risen, too, considerably since that

time, though, on account of the greater variety of wages paid there in

different places, it is more difficult to ascertain how much. In 1614, the

pay of a foot soldier was the same as in the present times, eightpence

a-day. When it was first established, it would naturally be regulated by the

usual wages of common labourers, the rank of people from which foot soldiers

are commonly drawn. Lord-chief-justice Hales, who wrote in the time of

Charles II. computes the necessary expense of a labourer’s family,

consisting of six persons, the father and mother, two children able to do

something, and two not able, at ten shillings a-week, or twenty-six pounds

a-year. If they cannot earn this by their labour, they must make it up, he

supposes, either by begging or stealing. He appears to have enquired very

carefully into this subject {See his scheme for the maintenance of the

poor, in Burn’s History of the Poor Laws.}. In 1688, Mr Gregory King, whose

skill in political arithmetic is so much extolled by Dr Davenant, computed

the ordinary income of labourers and out-servants to be fifteen pounds

a-year to a family, which he supposed to consist, one with another, of three

and a half persons. His calculation, therefore, though different in

appearance, corresponds very nearly at bottom with that of Judge Hales. Both

suppose the weekly expense of such families to be about twentypence a-head.

Both the pecuniary income and expense of such families have increased

considerably since that time through the greater part of the kingdom, in

some places more, and in some less, though perhaps scarce anywhere so much

as some exaggerated accounts of the present wages of labour have lately

represented them to the public. The price of labour, it must be observed,

cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere, different prices being often

paid at the same place and for the same sort of labour, not only according

to the different abilities of the workman, but according to the easiness or

hardness of the masters. Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we

can pretend to determine is, what are the most usual; and experience seems

to shew that law can never regulate them properly, though it has often

pretended to do so.

 

The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries and

conveniencies of life which it can procure to the labourer, has, during the

course of the present century, increased perhaps in a still greater

proportion than its money price. Not only grain has become somewhat cheaper,

but many other things, from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable

and wholesome variety of food, have become a great deal cheaper. Potatoes,

for example, do not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom,

cost half the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. The

same thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages ; things which were

formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly raised by

the plough. All sort of garden stuff, too, has become cheaper. The greater

part of the apples, and even of the onions, consumed in Great Britain, were,

in the last century, imported from Flanders. The great improvements in the

coarser manufactories of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers

with cheaper and better clothing; and those in the manufactories of the

coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments of trade, as well as

with many agreeable and convenient pieces of household furniture. Soap,

salt, candles, leather, and fermented liquors, have, indeed, become a good

deal dearer, chiefly from the taxes which have been laid upon them. The

quantity of these, however, which the labouring poor an under any necessity

of consuming, is so very small, that the increase in their price does not

compensate the diminution in that of so many other things. The common

complaint, that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the

people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the same

food, clothing, and lodging, which satisfied them in former times, may

convince us that it is not the money price of labour only, but its real

recompence, which has augmented.

 

Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to

be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency, to the society ? The

answer seems at first abundantly plain. Servants, labourers, and workmen of

different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political

society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part, can never

be regarded as any inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be

flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor

and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and

lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce

of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and

lodged.

 

Poverty, though it no doubt discourages, does not always prevent, marriage.

It seems even to be favourable to generation. A half-starved Highland woman

frequently bears more than twenty children, while a pampered fine lady is

often incapable of bearing any, and is generally exhausted by two or three.

Barrenness, so frequent among women of fashion, is very rare among those of

inferior station. Luxury, in the fair sex, while it inflames, perhaps, the

passion for enjoyment, seems always to weaken, and frequently to destroy

altogether, the powers of generation.

 

But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely

unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced ; but

in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies. It is not

uncommon, I have been frequently told, in the Highlands of Scotland, for a

mother who has born twenty children not to have two alive. Several officers

of great experience have assured me, that, so far from recruiting their

regiment, they have never been able to supply it with drums and fifes, from

all the soldiers’ children that were born in it. A greater number of fine

children, however, is seldom seen anywhere than about a barrack of soldiers.

Very few of them, it seems, arrive at the age of thirteen or fourteen. In

some places, one half the children die before they are four years of age, in

many places before they are seven, and in almost all places before they are

nine or ten. This great mortality, however will everywhere be found chiefly

among the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend them with

the same care as those of better station. Though their marriages are

generally more fruitful than those of people of fashion, a smaller

proportion of their children arrive at maturity. In foundling hospitals, and

among the children brought up by parish charities, the mortality is still

greater than among those of the common people.

Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the

means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply be yond it. But

in civilized society, it is only among the inferior ranks of people that the

scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of

the human species ; and it can do so in no other way than by destroying a

great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce.

 

The liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better for their

children, and consequently to bring up a greater number, naturally tends to

widen and extend those limits. It deserves to be remarked, too, that it

necessarily does this as nearly as possible in the proportion which the

demand for labour requires. If this demand is continually increasing, the

reward of labour must necessarily encourage in such a manner the marriage

and multiplication of labourers, as may enable them to supply that

continually increasing demand by a continually increasing population. If the

reward should at any time be less than what was requisite for this purpose,

the deficiency of hands would soon raise it ; and if it should at any time

be more, their excessive multiplication would soon lower it to this

necessary rate. The market would be so much understocked with labour in the

one case, and so much overstocked in the other, as would soon force back its

price to that proper rate which the circumstances of the society required.

It is in this manner that the demand for men, like that for any other

commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men, quickens it when it

goes on too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast. It is this

demand which regulates and determines the state of propagation in all the

different countries of the world ; in North America, in Europe, and in China

; which renders it rapidly progressive in the first, slow and gradual in the

second, and altogether stationary in the last.

 

The wear and tear of a slave, it has been said, is at the expense of his

master ; but that of a free servant is at his own expense. The wear and tear

of the latter, however, is, in reality, as much at the expense of his master

as that of the former. The wages paid to journeymen and servants of every

kind must be such as may enable them, one with another to continue the race

of journeymen and servants, according as the increasing, diminishing, or

stationary demand of the society, may happen to require. But though the wear

and tear of a free servant be equally at the expense of his master, it

generally costs him