72

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

much higher in North America than in any part of England.In the province of New York common labourers earn * threeshillings and sixpence currency, equal to two shillings ster-ling, a day; ship carpenters, ten shillings and sixpence cur-rency, with a pint of rum worth sixpence sterling, equal inall to six shillings and sixpence sterling; house carpentersand bricklayers, eight shillings currency, equal to four shil-lings and sixpence sterling; journeymen tailors, five shillingscurrency, equal to about two shillings and tenpence sterling.These prices are all above the London price; and wages aresaid to be as high in the other colonies as in New York .The price of provisions is everywhere in North America much loM'er than in England. A dearth has never beenknown there. In the worst seasons, they have always hada sufficiency for themselves, though less for exportation. Ifthe money price of labour, therefore, be higher than it is any-where in the mother country, its real price, the real com-mand of the necessaries and conveniences of life which itconveys to the labourer, must be higher in a still greater pro-portion.

But though North America is not yet so rich as England,it is much more thriving, and advancing with much greaterrapidity to the further acquisition of riches. The most de-cisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increaseof the number of its inhabitants. In Great Britain , and mostother European countries, they are not supposed to doublein less than five hundred years. In the British colonies inNorth America , it has been found, that they double in twentyor five-and-twenty years. Nor in the present times is thisincrease principally owing to the continual importation ofnew inhabitants, but to the great multiplication of the spe-cies. Those who live to old age, it is said, frequently seethere from fifty to a hundred, and sometimes many more,descendants from their own body. Labour is there so wellrewarded, that a numerous family of children, instead ofbeing a burthen, is a source of opulence and prosperity tothe parents. The labour of each child, before it can leavetheir house, is computed to be worth a hundred pounds cleargain to them. A young widow with four or five young chil-dren, who, among the middling or inferior ranks of peoplein Europe , would have so little chance for a second husband,is there frequently courted as a sort of fortune. The value

* Hub was written in 1773 , before the commencement of tlie laic disturbances.