THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

Ill

To compensate it completely, the common returns ought,over and above the ordinary profits of stock, not only to makeup for all occasional losses, but to afford a surplus profit to theadventurers of the same nature with the profit"^ insurers.But if the common returns were sufficient for all this, bank-ruptcies would not be more frequent in these than in othertrades.

Of the five circumstances, therefore, which vary the wagesof labour, two only alfect the profits of stock; the agreeable-ness of the business, and the risk or security with which it isattended. In point of agreeableness or disagreeableness,there is little or no difference in the far greater part of thedifferent employments of stock; but a great deal in those oflabour; and the ordinary profit of stock, though it rises withthe risk, does not always seem to rise in proportion to it. Itshould follow from all this, that, in the same society or neigh-bourhood, the average and ordinary rates of profit in the dif-ferent employments of stock should be more nearly upon alevel than the pecuniary wages of the different sorts of labour.They are so accordingly. The difference between the earn-ings of a common labourer and those of a well-employedlawyer or physician, is evidently much greater than that be-tween the ordinary profits in any two different branches oftrade. The apparent difference besides, in the profits of dif-ferent trades, is generally a deception arising from our not al-ways distinguishing what ought to be considered as wages,from what ought to be considered as profit.

Apothecaries’ profit is become a by-word, denoting some-thing uncommonly extravagant. This great apparent profit,however, is frequently no more than the reasonable wages oflabour. The skill of an apothecary is a much nicer and moredelicate matter than that of any artificer whatever; and thetrust which is reposed in him is of much greater importance,lie is the physician of the poor in all cases, and of the richwhen the distress or danger is not very great. His reward,therefore, ought to be suitable to his skill and his trust, and itarises generally from the price at which he sells his drugs.But the whole drugs which the best employed apothecary,in a large market town, will sell in a year, may not perhapscost him above thirty or forty pounds. Though he shouldsell them, therefore, for three or four hundred, or at a thou-sand per cent, profit, this may frequently be no more than thereasonable wages of his labour charged, in the only way in