those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes

occasion.

This principle shows the fallacy of the opinion so generally entertained respecting the great earnings of porters, hackney coachmen, watermen, and generally of all workmen employed only for short periods, and on particular occasions. Such persons frequently make as much in an hour or two as a regularly employed workman makes in a day; but this greater hire, during the time they are employed, is found to be only a bare compensation for the labour they perform, and for the time they are necessarily idle; instead of making money, such persons are almost invariably poorer than those who are engaged in more constant occupations.

The interruption to employments occasioned by the celebration of holidays, has a similar effect on wages. There are countries in which the holidays, including Sundays, make a full half of the year; and the necessary wages of labour must there be about double of what they would be were these holidays abolished.

Fourthly, The wages of labour vary according to the small or great trust which must be reposed in the workmen.

"The wages of goldsmiths and jewellers are everywhere superior to those of many other workmen, not only of equal, but of much superior ingenuity; on account of the precious materials with which they are entrusted.

Q

"We trust our health to the physician; our fortune, and sometimes our life and reputation, to the lawyer and attorney. Such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of a very mean or low condition. Their reward must be such, therefore, as may give them that rank in the society which so important a trust requires. The long time and the great expence which must be laid out in their education, when combined with this circumstance, necessarily enhances still further the price of their labour."*

Fifthly, The wages of labour in different employments vary according to the probability or improbability of success in them.

This cause of variation chiefly affects the wages of the higher class of labourers, or of those who practise what are usually denominated liberal professions.

If a young man is bound apprentice to a shoemaker, or a tailor, there is hardly any doubt but he will attain to an ordinary degree of proficiency and expertness in his business, and that he will be able to live by it. But, if he is bound apprentice to a lawyer, a painter, a sculptor, or a player, there are ten chances to one if he ever attains to such a degree of proficiency in either of these callings as will enable him to subsist on his earnings. But, in professions where many fail for one who succeeds, the fortunate one ought not only to gain such a rate of wages as will indemnify him for all the expences incurred in his

education, but also for all that has been expended in the education of his unsuccessful competitors. It is abundantly certain, however, that the wages of lawyers, players, sculptors, &c. taken in the aggregate, never amount to so large a sum. The lottery of the law, and the other liberal professions, has many great prizes, but there is, notwithstanding, a large excess of blanks. 66 Compute," says Dr Smith, "in any particular place, what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be annually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. But, make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students of law, in all the different Inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expence, even though you rate the former as high, and the latter as low as can well be done.The lottery of the law, therefore, is very far from being a perfectly fair lottery; and that, as well as many other liberal and honourable professions, is, in point of pecuniary gains, evidently under recompensed."

But the love of that wealth, power, and consideration, that most commonly attend superior excellence in any of the liberal professions, and the overweening confidence placed by each individual in his own good fortune, are sufficient to overbalance all the disadvantages and drawbacks that attend them; and never fail to crowd their ranks with all the most generous and liberal spirits.

It is unnecessary to enter upon any farther details with respect to this part of our subject. It has been sufficiently proved, that the permanent differences that actually obtain in the rate of wages paid to those who are engaged in different employments in countries where industry is free and unfettered, are never more than sufficient to balance the favourable or unfavourable circumstances attending them. Those who receive the highest wages, are not, when the cost of their education, the chances of their success, and the various disadvantages incident to their professions, are taken into account, really better paid than those who receive the lowest. The wages earned by the different classes of workmen are equal, not when each individual earns the same number of shillings, or of pence, in a given space of time, but when each is paid in proportion to the severity of the labour he has to perform, to the degree of previous education and skill that it requires, and to the other causes of variation already specified. So long, indeed, as the principle of competition is allowed to operate without restraint, or so long as each individual is allowed to employ himself as he pleases, we may be assured, that the higgling of the market will always adjust the rate of wages in different employments on the principle now stated, and that they will be, all things considered, very nearly equal. If you depress the rate of wages in one employment below the common level, labourers will leave it to go to others; and if you raise it above the same common level, labourers will be attracted to it from those departments where wa

ges are lower, until their increased competition has sunk them to their average standard. A period of greater or less duration, according to the peculiar circumstances affecting each particular employment, is always required to bring about this equalization. But all inquiries, that have the establishment of general principles for their object, either are, or ought to be, founded on periods of average duration; and whenever such is the case, we may always, without occasioning the slightest error, assume that the wages earned in different employments are, all things taken into account, precisely equal.

For similar reasons to those which have now been stated, it is easy to see that the profits accruing to the capi- ↓ talists engaged in different businesses, though varying proportionally to the greater or less risk, and other circumstances affecting the capitals they employ, must really, when all things are taken into account, be about the same in them all. It is obvious, indeed, that profits have not attained their level until they have been adjusted so as to balance these different advantages and disadvantages. None would engage in unusually hazardous undertakings, if the capital employed in them was only to yield the same profit that may be obtained by employing it in more secure businesses. Wherever there is extraordinary risk, that risk must be compensated. And hence, the well known distinction between gross and net profit. Gross profit always varies according to the risk, the respectability, and the agreeableness of different employments,