An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith (ebooks children's books free .TXT) 📗
- Author: Adam Smith
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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
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