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The produce of fuch labour comes frequently CHA P. cheaper to market than would otherwife be fuitable to its nature. Stockings in many parts of Scotland are knit much cheaper than they can any-where be wrought upon the loom. They are the work of fervants and labourers, who derive the principal part of their fubfiftence from fome other employment. More than a thousand pair of Shetland stockings are annually imported into Leith, of which the price is from five pence to feven pence a pair. At Learwick, the fmall capital of the Shetland islands, ten pence a day, I have been affured, is a common price of common labour. In the fame islands they knit worsted stockings to the value of a guinea a pair and upwards.

The fpinning of linen yarn is carried on in Scotland nearly in the fame way as the knitting of stockings by fervants who are chiefly hired for other purposes. They earn but a very scanty fubfiftence, who endeavour to get their whole livelihood by either of those trades. In most parts of Scotland she is a good spinner who can earn twenty pence a week.

In opulent countries the market is generally fo extenfive, that any one trade is fufficient to employ the whole labour and stock of those who occupy it. Inftances of people's living by one employment, and at the fame time deriving fome little advantage from another, occur chiefly in poor countries. The following inftance, however, of fomething of the fame kind is to be found in the capital of a very rich one. There

I.

BOOK is no city in Europe, I believe, in which houfe, rent is dearer than in London, and yet I know no capital in which a furnished apartment can be hired fo cheap. Lodging is not only much cheaper in London than in Paris; it is much cheaper than in Edinburgh of the fame degree of goodnefs; and what may feem extraordinary, the dearnefs of houfe-rent is the cause of the cheapnefs of lodging. The dearnefs of houserent in London arifes, not only from thofe caufes which render it dear in all great capitals, the dearnefs of labour, the dearnefs of all the materials of building, which muft generally be brought from a great diftance, and above all the dearnefs of ground-rent, every landlord acting the part of a monopolift, and frequently exacting a higher rent for a fingle acre of bad land in a town, than can be had for a hundred of the beft in the country; but it arifes in part from the peculiar manners and cuftoms of the people, which oblige every mafter of a family to hire a whole house from top to bottom. A dwellinghoufe in England means every thing that is contained under the fame roof. In France, Scotland, and many other parts of Europe, it frequently means no more than a fingle ftory. A tradefman in London is obliged to hire a whole house in that part of the town where his customers live. His fhop is upon the ground-floor, and he and his family fleep in the garret; and he endeavours to pay a part of his houfe-rent by letting the two middle ftories to lodgers. He expects to maintain his family by his trade, and

not

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not by his lodgers. Whereas, at Paris and CHA P. Edinburgh, the people who let lodgings have commonly no other means of fubfiftence; and the price of the lodging muft pay, not only the rent of the house, but the whole expence of the family.

PART II.

Inequalities occafioned by the Policy of Europe,

SUCH

are the inequalities in the whole of the advantages and difadvantages of the different employments of labour and ftock, which the defect of any of the three requifites abovementioned muft occafion, even where there is the most perfect liberty. But the policy of Europe, by not leaving things at perfect liberty, occafions other inequalities of much greater importance.

It does this chiefly in the three following ways. First, by restraining the competition in fome employments to a fmaller number than would otherwife be difpofed to enter into them; fecondly, by increasing it in others beyond what it naturally would be; and, thirdly, by obftructing the free circulation of labour and stock, both from employment to employment and from place to place.

First, The policy of Europe occafions a very important inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock, by restraining the competition

N 4

I.

BOOK Competition in fome employments to a smaller number than might otherwife be difpofed to enter into them.

The exclufive privileges of corporations are the principal means it makes ufe of for this purpofe.

The exclufive privilege of an incorporated trade neceffarily reftrains the competition, in the town where it is established, to those who are free of the trade. To have ferved an appren ticeship in the town, under a master properly qualified, is commonly the neceffary requifite for obtaining this freedom. The bye-laws of the corporation regulate fometimes the number of apprentices which any master is allowed to have, and almost always the number of years which each apprentice is obliged to ferve. The inten tion of both regulations is to reftrain the compe. tition to a much smaller number than might otherwise be disposed to enter into the trade, The limitation of the number of apprentices reftrains it directly, A long term of apprenticeship restrains it more indirectly, but as effectu ally, by increafing the expence of education.

In Sheffield no mafter cutler can have more than one apprentice at a time, by a bye-law of the corporation, In Norfolk and Norwich no mafter weaver can have more than two appren, tices, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month to the king. No mafter hatter can have more than two apprentices any-where in England, or in the English plantations, under pain of forfeiting five pounds a month, half to the

X.

king, and half to him who fhall fue in any court C H A P. of record. Both thefe regulations, though they have been confirmed by a public law of the kingdom, are evidently dictated by the fame corporation spirit which enacted the bye-law of Sheffield. The filk weavers in London had fcarce been incorporated a year, when they enacted a bye-law, reftraining any master from having more than two apprentices at a time. It required a particular act of parliament to refcind this bye-law.

Seven years feem anciently to have been, all over Europe, the ufual term eftablished for the duration of apprenticeships in the greater part of incorporated trades. All fuch incorporations were anciently called universities; which indeed is the proper Latin name for any incorporation whatever. The univerfity of smiths, the univerfity of taylors, &c. are expreffions which we commonly meet with in the old charters of ancient towns. When thofe particular incorporations which are now peculiarly called univerfities were first established, the term of years which it was neceffary to ftudy, in order to obtain the degree of master of arts, appears evidently to have been copied from the term of apprenticeship in common trades, of which the incorporations were much more ancient. As to have wrought seven years under a mafter properly qualified, was neceffary, in order to entitle any perfon to become a master, and to have himfelf apprentices in a common trade; fo to have ftudied feven years under a master properly qua

lified,