ments to enlist in the army are, notwithstanding, found to be much greater than those which prompt young men to enter the navy. The life of a sailor is perhaps more adventurous than that of a soldier; but he has no regular uniform; his employment is comparatively dirty and disagreeable; his labour more severe; and while at sea, he suffers a species of imprisonment, and cannot, like the soldier, excite either the envy or admiration of others. In consequence, the wages of seamen almost invariably exceed those of soldiers; and there is a greater difficulty of obtaining recruits at the breaking out of a war.

In England, the disadvantages and drawbacks naturally incident to a seafaring life, have been considerably increased by the practice of impressment. The violence and injustice to which sailors are exposed, by their liability to impressment, tend to prevent young men from entering on board ship, and thus, by artificially lessening the supply of sailors, raise their wages above their natural level, to the extreme injury both of the queen's and the merchant service. "The custom of impressment puts a freeborn British sailor on the same footing as a Turkish slave. The Grand Seignior cannot do a more absolute act than to order a man to be dragged away from his family, and, against his will, run his head against the mouth of a cannon; and if such acts should be frequent in Turkey, upon any one set of useful men, would it not drive them away to other countries, and thin their numbers yearly? and would not the remaining few double or triple their wages? which is the case with our sailors, in time of war, to the great detriment of our commerce.'

In proof of the accuracy of this statement, it may be mentioned, that while the wages of all other sorts of labourers and artisans are uniformly higher in the United States than in England, those of sailors are generally lower. The reason is, that the navy of the United States is manned by means of voluntary enlistment only. The Americans are desirous

1 Richardson's Essay on the Causes of the Decline of Foreign Trade. Ed. 1756, p. 24.

of becoming a great naval power, and they have wisely relinquished a practice which would have driven their best sailors from their service, and have forced them to man their fleet with the sweepings of their gaols.

It has been estimated that there were above 16,000 British sailors on board American ships at the close of last war; and the wages of English seamen had then risen to about double the rate paid to the Americans. This extraordinary influx of British seamen into the American service, and the no less extraordinary rise in their wages at home, can only be accounted for by our continuing to resort to impressment after it was abandoned by the United States. Formerly our seamen were in the habit, on the breaking out, of wars, of deserting to Holland; but the difference of language was an insuperable obstacle to their carrying this practice to any very injurious extent. Deserters to the United States do not, however, encounter any such obstacle. There our sailors are assured of a safe asylum among their kindred and friends among those whose language, religion, customs, and habits are identical with their own-and who are anxious to avail themselves of every means by which they may draw them to their service. The abolition of impressment will be indispensable to countervail such overpowering inducements to desertion. And, as it has been shown, that impressment is not really necessary for the manning of the fleet,' we trust that it may be finally abolished; and that the efforts of the Americans to increase their naval power may not be assisted by our obstinately clinging to a system fraught with injustice and oppression.

The officers of the army and navy, and many of those functionaries who fill situations of great trust and responsibility, receive only a small pecuniary remuneration. The consideration attached to such situations, and the influence they confer on their possessors, form a principal part of their salary.

Secondly, The wages of labour in particular businesses

1 Wealth of Nations-Note XII.

vary according to the comparative facility with which they may be learned.

There are several sorts of labour which a man may perform without any, or but little, previous instruction; and in which he will, consequently, gain a certain rate of wages from the moment he is employed. But, in civilized societies, a great variety of employments can be carried on by those only who have been regularly instructed in them. And it is evident, that the wages of such skilled labourers must exceed the wages of those who are comparatively rude, so as to afford them a sufficient compensation for the time they have lost and the expense they have incurred in their education. Suppose, to illustrate this principle, that the ordinary rate of wages paid to unskilled labourers is £35 a year; If the edu cation of a skilled labourer-a jeweller or engraver, for example-and his maintenance up to the period when he begins to support himself, cost £300 more than is required for the maintenance of an unskilled labourer up to the same period, it is quite obvious that the former will not be in so good a situation as his unskilled neighbours, unless his wages exceed theirs by a sum sufficient not only to yield him the customary rate of profit on the extra sum of £300, expended on his education and maintenance, but to replace the sum itself previously to the probable termination of his life. If he ob tain less than this, he will be underpaid; and if he obtain more he will be overpaid, and there will be an influx of new entrants, until their competition has reduced wages to their proper level.

The policy of Great Britain, and of most other European nations, has added to the necessary cost of breeding up skilled labourers, by forcing them to serve as apprentices for a longer period than is in most cases necessary to obtain a knowledge of the trades they mean to exercise. But, as the wages of labour must be proportioned, not only to the skill and dexterity of the labourer, but also to the time he has spent, and the difficulties and expense to which he has been put in learning his business, it is plain that if an individual be com

pelled to serve an apprenticeship of seven years to a business which he might have learned in two or three years, he must obtain a proportionally higher rate of wages after the expiration of his apprenticeship, than would otherwise have sufficed for his remuneration. The institution of unnecessarily long apprenticeships is, therefore, productive of a double injury. It injures the employers of workmen, by artificially raising the wages of journeymen; and it injures the workmen, from its tendency to generate idle and dissipated habits, by making them pass so large a portion of their youth without any sufficient motive to be industrious.

By the common law of England, every man has a right to employ himself at pleasure in every lawful trade. But this sound principle was almost entirely subverted by a statute passed, in compliance with the solicitations of the corporate bodies, in the 5th year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, commonly called the Statute of Apprenticeship. It enacted that no person should, for the future, exercise any trade, craft, or mystery, at that time exercised in England or Wales, unless he had previously served to it an apprenticeship of seven years at least; and what had before been a bye-law of a few corporations, thus became the general and statute law of the kingdom. Fortunately, the courts of law were always singularly disinclined to enforce the provisions of this statute. Though the words of the act plainly include the whole kingdom of England and Wales, it was interpreted to refer only to market towns; and it was also interpreted to refer only to those trades which had been practised in England when the statute was passed, and to have no reference to such as had been subsequently introduced. This interpretation gave occasion to several very absurd and even ludierous distinctions. It was adjudged, for example, that a coachmaker could neither himself make nor employ a journeyman to make his coach-wheels, but must buy them of a master wheelwright, this latter trade having been exercised in England before the 5th of Elizabeth. But a wheelwright, though he had never served an apprenticeship to a coach

maker, might either make himself, or employ journeymen to make coaches, the trade of a coachmaker not being within the statute, because not exercised in England at the time when it was passed. The contradiction and absurdity of these regulations, and the impolicy and injurious operation of the statute had long been obvious; but so slow is the progress of sound legislation, and so powerful the opposition to every change affecting private interests, that it was not repealed until 1814. The Act for this purpose did not, however, interfere with any of the existing rights, privileges, or bye-laws of the different legally constituted corporations, But wherever these do not interpose, the formation of apprenticeships and their duration is now left to be adjusted by the parties themselves.

The class of female domestic servants comprises one of the largest divisions of the labouring population, and that, perhaps, which is best provided for. And as most descriptions of in-door female labour may be practised with but little training, it may seem difficult to account for the high wages paid to domestics, and for their superior condition as compared with needle-women, washer-women, and those females generally who depend on chance employment. But, though in many respects desirable, the situation of domestic servants, whether male or female, has several considerable drawbacks. They are subject to numerous restraints. And, besides performing their respective menial offices, they are obliged to conform, whether they like them or not, to the rules and regulations of the families in which they live. Most people have, however, a disinclination to be thus dictated to by others. And those who consent to execute menial offices at the bidding of masters and mistresses, feel that they are engaged in what is reckoned a mean and servile employment, and that they occupy a low position in the public estimation, There is, no doubt, much ill-founded prejudice in the estimate that is thus commonly formed of the station of household servants. We do not well see, supposing their education and other attainments to be equal, why a man's servants