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

as well as that of Hippias and

Protagoras, two other eminent teachers of those times, is represented by Plato as splendid,

even to ostentation. Plato himself is said to have lived with a good deal of magnificence.

Aristotle, after having been tutor to Alexander, and most munificently rewarded, as it is

universally agreed, both by him and his father, Philip, thought it worth while,

notwithstanding, to return to Athens, in order to resume the teaching of his school. Teachers

of the sciences were probably in those times less common than they came to be in an age or

two afterwards, when the competition had probably somewhat reduced both the price of their

labour and the admiration for their persons. The most eminent of them, however, appear

always to have enjoyed a degree of consideration much superior to any of the like profession

in the present times. The Athenians sent Carneades the academic, and Diogenes the stoic,

upon a solemn embassy to Rome; and though their city had then declined from its former

grandeur, it was still an independent and considerable republic.

 

Carneades, too, was a Babylonian by birth; and as there never was a people more jealous of

admitting foreigners to public offices than the Athenians, their consideration for him must

have been very great.

 

This inequality is, upon the whole, perhaps rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It

may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher ; but the cheapness of literary

education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency. The

public, too, might derive still greater benefit from it, if the constitution of those schools and

colleges, in which education is carried on, was more reasonable than it is at present through

the greater part of Europe.

 

Thirdly, the policy of Europe, by obstructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both

from employment to employment, and from place to place, occasions, in some cases, a very

inconvenient inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of their different

employments.

 

The statute of apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to

another, even in the same place. The exclusive privileges of corporations obstruct it from one

place to another, even in the same employment.

 

It frequently happens, that while high wages are given to the workmen in one manufacture,

those in another are obliged to content themselves with bare subsistence. The one is in an

advancing state, and has therefore a continual demand for new hands ; the other is in a

declining state, and the superabundance of hands is continually increasing. Those two

manufactures may sometimes be in the same town, and sometimes in the same

neighbourhood, without being able to lend the least assistance to one another. The statute of

apprenticeship may oppose it in the one case, and both that and an exclusive corporation in the

other. In many different manufactures, however, the operations are so much alike, that the

workmen could easily change trades with one another, if those absurd laws did not hinder

them. The arts of weaving plain linen and plain silk, for example, are almost entirely the

same. That of weaving plain woollen is somewhat different ; but the difference is so

insignificant, that either a linen or a silk weaver might become a tolerable workman in a very

few days. If any of those three capital manufactures, therefore, were decaying, the workmen

might find a resource in one of the other two which was in a more prosperous condition; and

their wages would neither rise too high in the thriving, nor sink too low in the decaying

manufacture. The linen manufacture, indeed, is in England, by a particular statute, open to

every body ; but as it is not much cultivated through the greater part of the country, it can

afford no general resource to the work men of other decaying manufactures, who, wherever

the statute of apprenticeship takes place, have no other choice, but dither to come upon the

parish, or to work as common labourers ; for which, by their habits, they are much worse

qualified than for any sort of manufacture that bears any resemblance to their own. They

generally, therefore, chuse to come upon the parish.

 

Whatever obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another, obstructs

that of stock likewise; the quantity of stock which can be employed in any branch of business

depending very much upon that of the labour which can be employed in it. Corporation laws,

however, give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another, than

to that of labour. It is everywhere much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege

of trading in a town-corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it.

 

The obstruction which corporation laws give to the free circulation of labour is common, I

believe, to every part of Europe. That which is given to it by the poor laws is, so far as I know,

peculiar to England. It consists in the difficulty which a poor man finds in obtaining a

settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his industry in any parish but that to which he

belongs. It is the labour of artificers and manufacturers only of which the free circulation is

obstructed by corporation laws. The difficulty of obtaining settlements obstructs even that of

common labour. It may be worth while to give some account of the rise, progress, and present

state of this disorder, the greatest, perhaps, of any in the police of England.

 

When, by the destruction of monasteries, the poor had been deprived of the charity of those

religious houses, after some other ineffectual attempts for their relief, it was enacted, by the

43d of Elizabeth, c. 2. that every parish should be bound to provide for its own poor, and that

overseers of the poor should be annually appointed, who, with the churchwardens, should

raise, by a parish rate, competent sums for this purpose.

 

By this statute, the necessity of providing for their own poor was indispensably imposed upon

every parish. Who were to be considered as the poor of each parish became, therefore, a

question of some importance. This question, after some variation, was at last determined by

the 13th and 14th of Charles II. when it was enacted, that forty days undisturbed residence

should gain any person a settlement in any parish; but that within that time it should be lawful

for two justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the churchwardens 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

sometime’s bribing their own poor to go clandestinely to another parish, and, by keeping

themselves concealed for forty days, to gain a settlement there, to the discharge of that to

which they properly belonged. It was enacted, therefore, by the 1st of James II. that the forty

days undisturbed residence of any person necessary to gain a settlement, should be accounted

only from the time of his delivering notice, in writing, of the place of his abode and the

number of his family, to one of the churchwardens or overseers of the parish where he came

to dwell.

 

But parish officers, it seems, were not always more honest with regard to their own than they

had been with regard to other parishes, and sometimes connived at such intrusions, receiving

the notice, and taking no proper steps in consequence of it. As every person in a parish,

therefore, was supposed to have an interest to prevent as much as possible their being

burdened by such intruders, it was further enacted by the 3rd of William III. that the forty

days residence should be accounted only from the publication of such notice in writing on

Sunday in the church, immediately after divine service.

 

” After all,” says Doctor Burn, “this kind of settlement, by continuing forty days after

publication of notice in writing, is very seldom obtained ; and the design of the acts is not so

much for gaining of settlements, as for the avoiding of them by persons coming into a parish

clandestinely, for the giving of notice is only putting a force upon the parish to remove. But if

a person’s situation is such, that it is doubtful whether he is actually removable or not, he

shall, by giving of notice, compel the parish either to allow him a settlement uncontested, by

suffering him to continue forty days, or by removing him to try the right.”

 

This statute, therefore, rendered it almost impracticable for a poor man to gain a new

settlement in the old way, by forty days inhabitancy. But that it might not appear to preclude

altogether the common people of one’ parish from ever establishing themselves with security

in another, it appointed four other ways by which a settlement might be gained without any

notice delivered or published. The first was, by being taxed to parish rates and paying them;

the second, by being elected into an annual parish office, and serving in it a year ; the third, by

serving an apprenticeship in the parish ; the fourth, by being hired into service there for a year,

and continuing in the same service during the whole of it. Nobody can gain a settlement by

either of the two first ways, but by the public deed of the whole parish, who are too well

aware of the consequences to adopt any new-comer, who has nothing but his labour to support

him, either by taxing him to parish rates, or by electing him into a parish office.

 

No married man can well gain any settlement in either of the two last ways. An apprentice is

scarce ever married ; and it is expressly enacted, that no married servant shall gain any

settlement by being hired for a year. The principal effect of introducing settlement by service,

has been to put out in a great measure the old fashion of hiring for a year; which before had

been so customary in England, that even at this day, if no particular term is agreed upon, the

law intends that every servant is hired for a year. But masters are not always willing to give

their servants a settlement by hiring them in this manner ; and servants are not always willing

to be so hired, because, as every last settlement discharges all the foregoing, they might

thereby lose their original settlement in the places of their nativity, the habitation of their

parents and relations.

 

No independent workman, it is evident, whether labourer or artificer, is likely to gain any new

settlement, either by apprenticeship or by service. When such a person, therefore, carried his

industry to a new parish, he was liable to be removed, how healthy and industrious soever, at

the caprice of any churchwarden or overseer, unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds

a-year, a thing impossible for one who has nothing but his labour to live by, or could give

such security for the discharge of the parish as two justices of the peace should judge

sufficient.

 

What security they shall require, indeed, is left altogether to their discretion; but they cannot

well require less than thirty pounds, it having been enacted, that the purchase even of a

freehold estate of less than thirty pounds value, shall not gain any person a settlement, as not

being sufficient for the discharge of the parish. But this is a security which scarce any man