An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

68

The Wealth of Nations

their subsistence, is not the cause, but the effect, of the difference

in their wages; though, by a strange misapprehension, I have fre-

quently heard it represented as the cause. It is not because one

man keeps a coach, while his neighbour walks a-foot, that the one

is rich, and the other poor; but because the one is rich, he keeps a

coach, and because the other is poor, he walks a-foot.

During the course of the last century, taking one year with an-

other, grain was dearer in both parts of the united kingdom than

during that of the present. This is a matter of fact which cannot

now admit of any reasonable doubt; and the proof of it is, if pos-

sible, still more decisive with regard to Scotland than with regard

to England. It is in Scotland supported by the evidence of the

public fiars, annual valuations made upon oath, according to the

actual state of the markets, of all the different sorts of grain in

every different county of Scotland. If such direct proof could re-

quire any collateral evidence to confirm it, I would observe, that

this has likewise been the case in France, and probably in most

other parts of Europe. With regard to France, there is the clearest

proof. But though it is certain, that in both parts of the united

kingdom grain was somewhat dearer in the last century than in

the present, it is equally certain that labour was much cheaper. If

the labouring poor, therefore, could bring up their families then,

they must be much more at their ease now. In the last century, the

most usual day-wages of common labour through the greater part

of Scotland were sixpence in summer, and fivepence in winter.

Three shillings a-week, the same price, very nearly still continues

to be paid in some parts of the Highlands and Western islands.

Through the greater part of the Low country, the most usual wages

of common labour are now eight pence a-day; tenpence, some-

times a shilling, about Edinburgh, in the counties which border

upon England, probably on account of that neighbourhood, and

in a few other places where there has lately been a considerable rise

in the demand for labour, about Glasgow, Carron, Ayrshire, etc.

In England, the improvements of agriculture, manufactures, and

commerce, began much earlier than in Scotland. The demand for

labour, and consequently its price, must necessarily have increased

with those improvements. In the last century, accordingly, as well

as in the present, the wages of labour were higher in England than

in Scotland. They have risen, too, considerably since that time,

though, on account of the greater variety of wages paid there in

different places, it is more difficult to ascertain how much. In

1614, the pay of a foot soldier was the same as in the present

times, eightpence a-day. When it was first established, it would

naturally be regulated by the usual wages of common labourers,

the rank of people from which foot soldiers are commonly drawn.

Lord-chief-justice Hales, who wrote in the time of Charles II. com-

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69

Adam Smith

putes the necessary expense of a labourer’s family, consisting of six

persons, the father and mother, two children able to do some-

thing, and two not able, at ten shillings a-week, or twenty-six

pounds a-year. If they cannot earn this by their labour, they must

make it up, he supposes, either by begging or stealing. He appears

to have enquired very carefully into this subject {See his scheme

for the maintenance of the poor, in Burn’s History of the Poor

Laws.}. In 1688, Mr Gregory King, whose skill in political arith-

metic is so much extolled by Dr Davenant, computed the ordi-

nary income of labourers and out-servants to be fifteen pounds a-

year to a family, which he supposed to consist, one with another,

of three and a half persons. His calculation, therefore, though dif-

ferent in appearance, corresponds very nearly at bottom with that

of Judge Hales. Both suppose the weekly expense of such families

to be about twenty-pence a-head. Both the pecuniary income and

expense of such families have increased considerably since that

time through the greater part of the kingdom, in some places more,

and in some less, though perhaps scarce anywhere so much as

some exaggerated accounts of the present wages of labour have

lately represented them to the public. The price of labour, it must

be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere, dif-

ferent prices being often paid at the same place and for the same

sort of labour, not only according to the different abilities of the

workman, but according to the easiness or hardness of the mas-

ters. Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend

to determine is, what are the most usual; and experience seems to

shew that law can never regulate them properly, though it has

often pretended to do so.

The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the neces-

saries and conveniencies of life which it can procure to the labourer,

has, during the course of the present century, increased perhaps in

a still greater proportion than its money price. Not only grain has

become somewhat cheaper, but many other things, from which

the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of

food, have become a great deal cheaper. Potatoes, for example, do

not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom, cost half

the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. The same

thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were

formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now com-

monly raised by the plough. All sort of garden stuff, too, has be-

come cheaper. The greater part of the apples, and even of the on-

ions, consumed in Great Britain, were, in the last century, im-

ported from Flanders. The great improvements in the coarser

manufactories of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers

with cheaper and better clothing; and those in the manufactories

of the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments of trade,

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