THE WE A I.TIl OK NATIONS.

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labour, and the cultivation oi“ tbciv own little possession isnot sufficient to occupy the time which is left at their owndisposal. When such occupiers were more numerous thanthey are at present, they are said to have been willing to givetheir spare time for a very small recompense to any body,and to have wrought for less wages than other labourers. Inancient times they seem to have been common all over Eu-rope . In countries ill cultivated and worse inhabited, thegreater part of landlords and farmers could not otherwiseprovide themselves with the extraordinary number of hands,which country labour requires at certain seasons. The dailyor weekly recompense which such labourers occasionally re-ceived from their masters, was evidently not the whole priceof their labour. Their small tenement made a considerablepart of it. This daily or weekly recompense, however, seemsto have been considered as the whole of it, by many writerswho have collected the prices of labour and provisions in an-cient times, and who have taken pleasure in representing bothas wonderfully low.

The produce of such labour comes frequently cheaper tomarket than would otherwise be suitable to its nature. Stock-ings in many parts of Scotland are knit much cheaper thanthey can anywhere be wrought upon the loom. They are thework of servants and labourers, who derive the principal partof their subsistence from some other employment. More thana thousand pair of Shetland stockings are annually importedinto Leith, of which the price is from live pence to sevenpence a pair. At Learwick, the small capital of the Shetlandislands, ten pence a day, 1 have been assured, is a commonprice ol common labour. In the same islands they knitworsted stockings to the value of a guinea a pair and upwards.

The spinning of linen yarn is carried on in Scotland nearlyin the same way as the knitting ol stockings, by servants whoare chielly hired for other purposes. They earn but a veryscanty subsistence, who endeavour to get their whole liveli-hood by either of those trades. In most parts of Scotland sheis a good spinner who can earn twenty pence a week.

In opulent countries the market is generally so extensive,that any one trade is sufficient to employ the whole labourand stock ofthose who occupy it. Instances of people’s livingby one employment, and at the same time deriving some littleadvantage from another, occur chielly in poor countries. Thefollowing instance, however, of something of the same kind