THE W E A LT 11 OF NATIONS.

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of servants, entourages masters, farmers especially, to em-ploy a greater number. Farmers upon such occasions expectmore profit from their corn by maintaining a few more labour-ing servants, than by selling it at a low price in the market.The demand for servants increases, while the number of thosewho offer to supply that demand diminishes. The price oflabour, therefore, frequently rises in cheap years,

In years of scarcity, the difficulty and uncertainty of sub-sistence make all such people eager to return to service. Butthe high price of provisions, by diminishing the funds des-tined for the maintenance of servants, disposes masters ratherto diminish than to increase the number of those they have.In dear years, too, poor independent workmen frequentlyconsume the little stocks with which they had used to supplythemselves with the materials of their work, and are obligedto become journeymen for subsistence. More people wantemployment than can easily get it; many are willing to takeit upon lower terms than ordinary, and the wages of bothservants and journeymen frequently sink in dear years.

Masters of all sorts, therefore, frequently make better bar-gains with their servants in dear than in cheap years, and findthem more humble and dependent in the former than in thelatter. They naturally, therefore, commend the former asmore favourable to industry. Landlords and farmers, besides,two of the largest classes of masters, hutfe another reason forbeing pleased with dear years. The rents of the one andthe profits of the other depend very much upon the price ofprovisions. Nothing can be more absurd, however, than toimagine that men in general should work less when they workfor themselves than when they work for other people. Apoor independent workman will generally be more indus-trious than even a journeyman who works by the piece. Theone enjoys the whole produce of his own industry, the othershares it with his master. The one, in his separate indepen-dent state, is less liable to the temptations of bad company,which in large manufactories so frequently ruin the moralsof the other. The superiority of the independent workmanover those servants who are hired by the month or by theyear, and whose wages and maintenance are the samewhether they do much or do little, is likely to be still greater.Cheap years tend to increase the proportion of independentworkmen to journeymen and servants of all kinds, and dearyears to diminish it.