THE WEALTH 01' NATIONS.

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of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing popula-tion. To complain of it, is to lament over the necessary ef-fect and cause of the greatest public prosperity.

It deserves to be remarked, perhaps, that it is in the pro-gressive state, while the society is advancing to the further ac-quisition, rather than when it has acquired its full comple-ment of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of thegreat body of the people, seems to be the happiest and themost comfortable. It is hard in the stationary, and misera-ble in the declining state. The progressive state is in realitythe cheerful and the hearty state to all the different orders ofthe society. The stationary is dull; the declining melancholy.

The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propa-gation, so it increases the industry of the common people.The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry,which, like every other human quality, improves in propor-tion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistenceincreases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfort-able hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his daysperhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strengthto the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shallalways find the workmen more active, diligent, and expedi-tious, tlian where they are low; in England, for example,than in Scotland ; in the neighbourhood of great towns, tlianin remote country places. Some workmen indeed, when theycan earn in four days what will maintain them through theweek, will be idle the other three. This, however, is by nomeans the case with the greater part. Workmen, on the con-trary, when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt tooverwork themselves, and to ruin their health and constitu-tion in a lew years. A carpenter in London , and in someother places, is not supposed to last in his utmost vigourabove eight years. Something of the same kind happens inmany other trades, in which the workmen are paid by thepiece; as they generally are in manufactures, and even incountry labour, wherever wages are higher than ordinary.Almost every class of artificers is subject to some peculiarinfirmity, occasioned by excessive application to their peculiarspecies of work, llainuzzini, an eminent Italian physician,has written a particular book concerning such diseases. Wedo not reckon our soldiers the most industrious set of peopleamong us. Yet when soldiers have been employed in someparticular sorts of work, and liberally paid by the piece, their