THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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and though they have scarce any chance of preferment, theyfigure to themselves, in their youthful fancies, a thousandoccasions of acquiring honour and distinction which neveroccur. These romantic hopes make the whole price of theirblood. Their pay is less than that of common labourers,and in actual service their fatigues are much greater.

The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageousas that of the army. The son of a creditable labourer or ar-tificer may frequently go to sea with his father’s consent;but if he enlists as a soldier it is always without it. Otherpeople see some chance of his making something by the onetrade: nobody but himself sees any of his making any thingby the other. The great admiral is less the object of publicadmiration than the great general; and the highest successin the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune and repu-tation, than equal success in the land. The same differenceruns through all the inferior degrees of preferment in both.By the rules of precedency a captain in the navy ranks witha colonel in the army: but he does not rank with him in thecommon estimation. As the great prizes in the lottery areless, the smaller ones must be more numerous. Commonsailors, therefore, more frequently get some fortune and pre-ferment than common soldiers; and the hope of those prizesis what principally recommends the trade. Though theirskill and dexterity are much superior to that of almost anyartificers, and though their whole life is one continual sceneof hardship and danger, yet for all this dexterity and skill,for all those hardships and dangers, while they remain inthe condition of common sailors, they receive scarce anyother recompense but the pleasure of exercising the one andof surmounting the other. Their wages are not greater thanthose of common labourers at the port which regulates therate of seamen’s wages. As they are continually going fromport to port, the monthly pay of those who sail from all thedifferent ports of Great Britain, is more nearly upon a levelthan that of any other workmen in those different places;and the rate of the port to and from which the greatest num-ber sail, that is, the port of London , regulates that of all therest. At London the wages of the greater part of the diffe-rent classes of workmen are about double those of the sameclasses at Edinburgh . But the sailors who sail from the port°f London seldom earn above three or four shillings a monthmore than those who sail from the port of Leith, and the dif-