TIIE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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places, are said to be suitable to this difference in the natureof their manufactures.

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any newbranch of commerce, or of any new practice in agriculture, isalways a speculation, from which the projector promises him-self extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are verygreat, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they arequite otherwise ; but in general they bear no regular propor-tion to those of other old trades in the neighbourhood. Ifthe project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high.When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly establishedand well known, the competition reduces them to the level ofother trades.

Secondly, this equality in the whole of the advantages anddisadvantages of the different employments of labour andstock, can take place only in the ordinary, or what may becalled the natural state of those employments.

The demand for almost every different species of labour issometimes greater and sometimes less than usual. In the onecase the advantages of the employment rise above, in the otherthey fall below, the common level. The demand for coun-try labour is greater at hay-time and harvest than during thegreater part of the year ; and wages rise with the demand.In time of war, when forty or fifty thousand sailors are forcedfrom the merchant service into that of the king, the demand forsailors to merchant ships necessarily rises with their scarcity,and their wages upon such occasions commonly rise from aguinea and seven-and-twenty shillings, to forty shillings andthree pounds a month. In a decaying manufacture, on thecontrary, many workmen, rather than quit their old trade,are contented with smaller wages than would otherwise besuitable to the nature of their employment.

- The profits of stock vary with the price of the commoditiesin which it is employed. As the price of any commodity risesabove the ordinary or average rate, the profits of at least somepart of the stock that is employed in bringing it to market,rise above their proper level, and as it falls they sink below it.All commodities are more or less liable to variations of price,but some are much more so than others. In all commoditieswhich are produced by human industry, the quantity of in-dustry annually employed is necessarily regulated by theannual demand, in such a manner that the average annualproduce may, as nearly as possible, be equal to the average