THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

101

critus.* A poacher is everywhere a very poor man in GreatBritain . In countries where the rigour of the law suffers nopoachers, the licensed hunter is not in a much better condi-tion. The natural taste for those employments makes morepeople follow them than can live comfortably by them, andthe produce of their labour, in proportion to its quantity,comes always too cheap to market to afford any thing but themost scanty subsistence to the labourers.

Disagreeableness and disgrace affect the profits of stockin the same manner as the wages of labour. The keeper ofan inn or tavern, who is never master of his own house, andwfio is exposed to the brutality of every drunkard, exercisesneither a very agreeable nor a very creditable business.But there is scarce any common trade in which a small stockyields so great a profit.

f Secondly, the wages of labour vary with the easiness andcheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning thebusiness.

When any expensive machine is erected, the extraordinarywork to be performed by it before it is worn out, it must beexpected, will replace the capital laid out upon it, with atleast the ordinary profits. A man educated at the expenseof much labour and time to any of those employments, whichrequire extraordinary dexterity and skill, may be comparedto one of those expensive machines. The work which helearns to perform, it must be expected, over and above theusual wages of common labour, will replace to him the wholeexpense of his education, with at least the ordinary profits ofan equally valuable capital. It must do this too in a reason-able time, regard being had to the very uncertain durationof human life, in the same manner as to the more certain du-ration of the machine.

The difference between the wages of skilled labour andthose of common labour is founded upon this principle.

The policy of Europe considers the labour of all mecha-nics, artificers, and manufacturers, as skilled labour; andthat of all country labourers as common labour. It seems tosuppose that of the former to be of a more nice and delicatenature than that of the latter. It is so perhaps in some cases;but in the greater part it is quite otherwise, as I shall endea-vour to shew by and by. The laws and customs of Europe ,therefore, in order to qualify any person for exercising the

* See Idy Ilium xxi.