130 THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

ing the competition in some employments to a smaller num-ber than would otherwise be disposed to enter into them,occasions a very important inequality in the whole of the ad-vantages and disadvantages of the different employments oflabour and stock.

Secondly, the policy of Europe ', by increasing thecompe*tition in some employments beyond what it naturally wouldbe, occasions another inequality of an opposite kind in thewhole of the advantages and disadvantages of the differentemployments of labour and stock.

It has been considered as of so much importance that aproper number of young people should be educated for cer-tain professions, that, sometimes the public, and sometimesthe piety of private founders, have established many pensions,scholarships, exhibitions,bursaries, &c. for this purpose, wh ichdraw many more people into those trades than could other-wise pretend to follow them. In all Christian countries, 1believe, the education of the greater part of churchmen ispaid for in this manner. Very few of them are educatedaltogether at their own expense. The long, tedious, and ex-pensive education, therefore, of those who are, will not al-ways procure them a suitable reward, the church beingcrowded with people who, in order to get employment, arewilling to accept of a much smaller recompense than whatsuch an education would otherwise have entitled them to;and in this manner the competition of the poor takes awaythe reward of the rich. It would be indecent, no doubt, tocompare either a curate or a chaplain with a journeyman inany common trade. The pay of a curate or chaplain, how-ever, may very properly be considered as of the same naturewith the wages of a journeyman. They are, all three, paidfor their work according to the contract which they mayhappen to make with their respective superiors. 1 i 11 alterthe middle of the fourteenth century, five merks, containingabout as much silver as ten pounds of our present money,was in England the usual pay of a curate or a stipendiaryparish priest, as we find it regulated by the decrees of severaldifferent national councils. At the same period four pencea day, containing the same quantity of silver as a shilling ofour present money, was declared to be the pay of a mastermason, and three pence a day, equal to nine pence of ourpresent money, that of a journeyman mason.* The wages

• Sec the Statute of Labourers, 25 Ed. III.