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BOOK their numbers are every-where fo great as commonly to reduce the price of their labour to a very paultry recompence.

Before the invention of the art of printing, the only employment by which a man of letters could make any thing by his talents, was that of a public or private teacher, or by communicating to other people the curious and useful knowledge which he had acquired himfelf: And this is ftill furely a more honourable, a more useful, and in general even a more profitable employment than that other of writing for a bookfeller, to which the art of printing has given occafion. The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requifite to qualify an eminent teacher of the fciences, are at leaft equal to what is neceffary for the greatest practitioners in law and phyfic. But the ufual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or phyfician; because the trade of the one is crowded with indigent people who have been brought up to it at the public expence; whereas those of the other two are incumbered with very few who have not been educated at their own. The ufual recompence, however, of public and private teachers, fmall as it may appear, would undoubtedly be lefs than it is, if the competition of thofe yet more indigent men of letters who write for bread was not taken out of the market. Before the invention of the art of printing, a scholar and a beggar feem to have been terms very nearly fynonymous. The different governors of the universities before that

time appear to have often granted licences to CHA P. their fcholars to beg.

In ancient times, before any charities of this kind had been established for the education of indigent people to the learned profeffions, the rewards of eminent teachers appear to have been much more confiderable. Ifocrates, in what is called his difcourfe against the fophifts, reproaches the teachers of his own times with inconfiftency. They make the most magnificent promises to their fcholars, fays he, and undertake to teach them to be wife, to be happy, and to be juft, and in return for fo important a service they ftipulate the paultry reward of four or five minæ. They who teach wisdom, continues he, ought certainly to be wife themselves; but if any man were to fell fuch a bargain for fuch a price, he would be convicted of the most evident folly." He certainly does not mean here to exaggerate the reward, and we may be affured that it was not lefs than he reprefents it. Four minæ were equal to thirteen pounds fix fhillings and eight pence: five minæ to fixteen pounds thirteen fhillings and four pence.

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thing not less than the largest of thofe two fums, therefore, must at that time have been usually paid to the most eminent teachers at Athens. Ifocrates himself demanded ten minæ, or thirtythree pounds fix fhillings and eight pence, from each fcholar. When he taught at Athens, he is faid to have had an hundred fcholars. I underftand this to be the number whom he taught at one time, or who attended what we would call

one

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BOOK one courfe of lectures, a number which will not

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appear extraordinary from fo great a city to fo famous a teacher, who taught too what was at that time the most fashionable of all fciences, rhetoric. He must have made, therefore, by each course of lectures, a thousand minæ, or 3,333l. 6s. 8d. A thousand minæ, accordingly, is faid by Plutarch in another place, to have been his Didactron, or ufual price of teaching. Many other eminent teachers in thofe times appear to have acquired great fortunes. Gorgias made a prefent to the temple of Delphi of his own ftatue in folid gold. We must not, I prefume, fuppofe that it was as large as the life. His way of living, as well as that of Hippias and Protagoras, two other eminent teachers of thofe times, is reprefented by Plato as fplendid even to oftentation. Plato himfelf is faid to have lived with a good deal of magnificence. Aristotle, after having been tutor to Alexander, and moft munificently rewarded, as it is univerfally agreed, both by him and his father Philip, thought it worth while, notwithstanding, to return to Athens, in order to refume the teaching of his fchool. Teachers of the fciences were probably in thofe times lefs common than they came to be in an age or two afterwards, when the competition had probably fomewhat reduced both the price of their labour and the admiration for their perfons. The most eminent of them, however, appear always to have enjoyed a degree of confideration much fuperior to any of the like profeffion in the prefent times. The Athenians

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fent Carneades the academic, and Diogenes the C HA P. ftoic, upon a folemn embaffy to Rome; and though their city had then declined from its former grandeur, it was ftill an independent and confiderable 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 confideration for him must have been very great.

This inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It may fomewhat degrade the profeffion of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is furely an advantage which greatly over-balances this trifling inconveniency. The public too might derive ftill greater benefit from it, if the conftitution of thofe fchools 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 obftruct ing the free circulation of labour and ftock both from employment to employment, and from place to place, occafions in fome cafes a very inconvenient inequality in the whole of the advantages and difadvantages of their different employments.

The ftatute of apprenticeship obftructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another, even in the fame place. The exclufive privileges of corporations obftruct it from one place to another, even in the fame employment.

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It frequently happens that while high wages are given to the workmen in one manufacture, those in another are obliged to content themfelves with bare fubfiftence. 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 fuperabundance of hands is continually increafing. Thofe two manufactures may fometimes be in the fame town, and fometimes in the fame neighbourhood, without being able to lend the leaft affiftance to one another. The statute of apprenticeship may oppose it in the one cafe, and both that and an exclufive corporation in the other. In many different manufactures, however, the operations are fo much alike, that the workmen could eafily change trades with one another, if thofe abfurd laws did not hinder them. The arts of weav ing plain linen and plain filk, for example, are almost entirely the fame. That of weaving plain woollen is somewhat different; but the difference is fo infignificant, that either a linen or a filk weaver might become a tolerable workman in a very few days. If any of thofe three capital manufactures, therefore, were decaying, the workmen might find a refource in one of the other two which was in a more profperous condition; and their wages would neither rife too high in the thriving, nor fink too low in the decaying manufacture. The linen manufacture indeed is, in England, by a particular ftatute, open to every body; but as it is not much cultivated through the greater part of the country,