An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

70

The Wealth of Nations

as well as with many agreeable and convenient pieces of house-

hold furniture. Soap, salt, candles, leather, and fermented liquors,

have, indeed, become a good deal dearer, chiefly from the taxes

which have been laid upon them. The quantity of these, however,

which the labouring poor an under any necessity of consuming, is

so very small, that the increase in their price does not compensate

the diminution in that of so many other things. The common

complaint, that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of

the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be con-

tented with the same food, clothing, and lodging, which satisfied

them in former times, may convince us that it is not the money

price of labour only, but its real recompence, which has augmented.

Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of

the people to be regarded as an advantage, or as an inconveniency,

to the society? The answer seems at first abundantly plain. Ser-

vants, labourers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far

greater part of every great political society. But what improves the

circumstances of the greater part, can never be regarded as any

inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing

and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor

and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe,

and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share

of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably

well fed, clothed, and lodged.

Poverty, though it no doubt discourages, does not always pre-

vent, marriage. It seems even to be favourable to generation. A

half-starved Highland woman frequently bears more than twenty

children, while a pampered fine lady is often incapable of bearing

any, and is generally exhausted by two or three. Barrenness, so

frequent among women of fashion, is very rare among those of

inferior station. Luxury, in the fair sex, while it inflames, perhaps,

the passion for enjoyment, seems always to weaken, and frequently

to destroy altogether, the powers of generation.

But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is ex-

tremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant

is produced; but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon

withers and dies. It is not uncommon, I have been frequently told,

in the Highlands of Scotland, for a mother who has born twenty

children not to have two alive. Several officers of great experience

have assured me, that, so far from recruiting their regiment, they

have never been able to supply it with drums and fifes, from all

the soldiers’ children that were born in it. A greater number of

fine children, however, is seldom seen anywhere than about a bar-

rack of soldiers. Very few of them, it seems, arrive at the age of

thirteen or fourteen. In some places, one half the children die

before they are four years of age, in many places before they are

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71

Adam Smith

seven, and in almost all places before they are nine or ten. This

great mortality, however will everywhere be found chiefly among

the children of the common people, who cannot afford to tend

them with the same care as those of better station. Though their

marriages are generally more fruitful than those of people of fash-

ion, a smaller proportion of their children arrive at maturity. In

foundling hospitals, and among the children brought up by par-

ish charities, the mortality is still greater than among those of the

common people.

Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to

the means of their subsistence, and no species can ever multiply

be yond it. But in civilized society, it is only among the inferior

ranks of people that the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to

the further multiplication of the human species; and it can do so

in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children

which their fruitful marriages produce.

The liberal reward of labour, by enabling them to provide better

for their children, and consequently to bring up a greater number,

naturally tends to widen and extend those limits. It deserves to be

remarked, too, that it necessarily does this as nearly as possible in

the proportion which the demand for labour requires. If this de-

mand is continually increasing, the reward of labour must neces-

sarily encourage in such a manner the marriage and multiplica-

tion of labourers, as may enable them to supply that continually

increasing demand by a continually increasing population. If the

reward should at any time be less than what was requisite for this

purpose, the deficiency of hands would soon raise it; and if it

should at any time be more, their excessive multiplication would

soon lower it to this necessary rate. The market would be so much

understocked with labour in the one case, and so much overstocked

in the other, as would soon force back its price to that proper rate

which the circumstances of the society required. It is in this man-

ner that the demand for men, like that for any other commodity,

necessarily regulates the production of men, quickens it when it

goes on too slowly, and stops it when it advances too fast. It is this

demand which regulates and determines the state of propagation

in all the different countries of the world; in North America, in

Europe, and in China; which renders it rapidly progressive in the

first, slow and gradual in the second, and altogether stationary in

the last.

The wear and tear of a slave, it has been said, is at the expense of

his master; but that of a free servant is at his own expense. The

wear and tear of the latter, however, is, in reality, as much at the

expense of his master as that of the former. The wages paid to

journeymen and servants of every kind must be such as may en-

able them, one with another to continue the race of journeymen

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