THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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Wc trust our health to the physician; our fortune, andsometimes our life and reputation, to the lawyer and attorney.Such confidence could not safely be reposed in people of avery mean or low condition. Their reward must be such,therefore, as may give them that rank in the society whichso important a trust requires. The long time and the greatexpense which must be laid out in their education, whencombined with this circumstance, necessarily enhance stillfurther the price of their labour.

When a person employs only his own stock in trade, thereis no trust; and the credit which he may get from otherpeople depends, not upon the nature of his trade, but upontheir opinion of his fortune, probity, and prudence. Thedifferent rates of profit, therefore, in the different branchesof trade, cannot arise from the different degrees of trust re-posed in the traders.

Fifthly, the wages of labour in different employments varyaccording to the probability or improbability of success inthem.

The probability that any particular person shall ever bequalified for the employment to which he is educated, is verydifferent in different occupations. In the greater part of me-chanic trades, success is almost certain; but very uncertainin the liberal professions. Put your son apprentice to a shoe-maker, there is little doubt of his learning to make a pair ofshoes: but send him to study the law, it is at least twenty toone if ever lie makes such proficiency as will enable him tolive by the business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those whodraw the prizes ought to gain all that is lost by those whodraw the blanks. In a profession, where twenty fail for onethat succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have beengained by the unsuccessful twenty. The counsellor at lawwho, perhaps, at near forty years of age, begins to makesomething by his profession, ought to receive the retribution,not only of his own so tedious and expensive education, butof that of more than twenty others who are never likely tomake any thing by it. How extravagant soever the fees ofcounsellors at law may sometimes appear, their real retribu-tion is never equal to this. Compute in any particular placewhat islikely-to be annually gained, and what is likely to beannually spent, by all the different workmen in any commontr ade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you willdad that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. But

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