THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

433

soldiers were absorbed in the great mass of the people, andemployed in a great variety of occupations!. Notonly no greatconvulsion, but no sensible disorder arose from so great achange in the situation of more than a hundred thousand men,all accustomed to the use of arms, and many of them to ra-pine and plunder. The number of vagrants was scarce any-where sensibly increased by it, even the wages of labour werenot reduced by it in any occupation, so far as I have beenable to learn, except in that of seamen in the merchant ser-vice. But if we compare together the habits of a soldier andof any sort of manufacturer, we shall find that those of thelatter do not tend so much to disqualify him from being em-ployed in a new trade, as those of the former from being em-ployed in any. The manufacturer has always been accus-tomed to look for his subsistence from his labour only: thesoldier to expect it from his pay. Application and industryhave been familiar to the one: idleness and dissipation tothe other. But it is surely much easier to change the direc-tion of industry from one sort of labour to another, than toturn idleness and dissipation to any. To the greater part ofmanufactures besides, it has already been observed, thereare other collateral manufactures of so similar a nature, thataworkman can easily transfer his industry from one of them toanother. The greater part of such workmen too are occa-sionally employed in country labour. The stock which em-ployed them in a particular manufacture before, will still re-main in the country to employ an equal number of people insome other way. The capital of the country remaining thesame, the demand for labour will likewise be the same, orvery nearly the same, though it may be exerted in differentplaces and for different occupations. Soldiers and seamen,indeed, when discharged from theking’sservice,are at libertyto exercise any trade within any town or place of Great Britain or Ireland . Let the same natural liberty of exer-cising what species of industry they please, be restored to allhis majesty’s subjects, in the same manner as to soldiers andseamen; that is, break down the exclusive privileges of cor-porations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship, both whichare really encroachments upon natural liberty, and add tothese the repeal of the law of settlements, so that a poorworkman, when thrown out of employment either in one tradeor in one place, may seek lor it in another trade or in anotherplace, without the fear either of a prosecution or of a re-