An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

94

The Wealth of Nations

drawn from an equal capital employed in any common trade. The

person who pays no more than this, evidently pays no more than

the real value of the risk, or the lowest price at which he can rea-

sonably expect to insure it. But though many people have made a

little money by insurance, very few have made a great fortune;

and, from this consideration alone, it seems evident enough that

the ordinary balance of profit and loss is not more advantageous

in this than in other common trades, by which so many people

make fortunes. Moderate, however, as the premium of insurance

commonly is, many people despise the risk too much to care to

pay it. Taking the whole kingdom at an average, nineteen houses

in twenty, or rather, perhaps, ninety-nine in a hundred, are not

insured from fire. Sea-risk is more alarming to the greater part of

people; and the proportion of ships insured to those not insured is

much greater. Many sail, however, at all seasons, and even in time

of war, without any insurance. This may sometimes, perhaps, be

done without any imprudence. When a great company, or even a

great merchant, has twenty or thirty ships at sea, they may, as it

were, insure one another. The premium saved up on them all may

more than compensate such losses as they are likely to meet with

in the common course of chances. The neglect of insurance upon

shipping, however, in the same manner as upon houses, is, in most

cases, the effect of no such nice calculation, but of mere thought-

less rashness, and presumptuous contempt of the risk.

The contempt of risk, and the presumptuous hope of success,

are in no period of life more active than at the age at which young

people choose their professions. How little the fear of misfortune

is then capable of balancing the hope of good luck, appears still

more evidently in the readiness of the common people to enlist as

soldiers, or to go to sea, than in the eagerness of those of better

fashion to enter into what are called the liberal professions.

What a common soldier may lose is obvious enough. Without

regarding the danger, however, young volunteers never enlist so

readily as at the beginning of a new war; and though they have

scarce any chance of preferment, they figure to themselves, in their

youthful fancies, a thousand occasions of acquiring honour and

distinction which never occur. These romantic hopes make the

whole price of their blood. Their pay is less than that of common

labourers, and, in actual service, their fatigues are much greater.

The lottery of the sea is not altogether so disadvantageous as

that of the army. The son of a creditable labourer or artificer may

frequently go to sea with his father’s consent; but if he enlists as a

soldier, it is always without it. Other people see some chance of

his making something by the one trade; nobody but himself sees

any of his making any thing by the other. The great admiral is less

the object of public admiration than the great general; and the

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95

Adam Smith

highest success in the sea service promises a less brilliant fortune

and reputation than equal success in the land. The same differ-

ence runs through all the inferior degrees of preferment in both.

By the rules of precedency, a captain in the navy ranks with a

colonel in the army; but he does not rank with him in the com-

mon estimation. As the great prizes in the lottery are less, the smaller

ones must be more numerous. Common sailors, therefore, more

frequently get some fortune and preferment than common sol-

diers; and the hope of those prizes is what principally recommends

the trade. Though their skill and dexterity are much superior to

that of almost any artificers; and though their whole life is one

continual scene of hardship and danger; yet for all this dexterity

and skill, for all those hardships and dangers, while they remain in

the condition of common sailors, they receive scarce any other

recompence but the pleasure of exercising the one and of sur-

mounting the other. Their wages are not greater than those of

common labourers at the port which regulates the rate of seamen’s

wages. As they are continually going from port to port, the monthly

pay of those who sail from all the different ports of Great Britain,

is more nearly upon a level than that of any other workmen in

those different places; and the rate of the port to and from which

the greatest number sail, that is, the port of London, regulates

that of all the rest. At London, the wages of the greater part of the

different classes of workmen are about double those of the same

classes at Edinburgh. But the sailors who sail from the port of

London, seldom earn above three or four shillings a month more

than those who sail from the port of Leith, and the difference is

frequently not so great. In time of peace, and in the merchant-

service, the London price is from a guinea to about seven-and-

twenty shillings the calendar month. A common labourer in Lon-

don, at the rate of nine or ten shillings a week, may earn in the

calendar month from forty to five-and-forty shillings. The sailor,

indeed, over and above his pay, is supplied with provisions. Their

value, however, may not perhaps always exceed the difference be-

tween his pay and that of the common labourer; and though it

sometimes should, the excess will not be clear gain to the sailor,

because he cannot share it with his wife and family, whom he

must maintain out of his wages at home.

The dangers and hair-breadth escapes of a life of adventures,

instead of disheartening young people, seem frequently to recom-

mend a trade to them. A tender mother, among the inferior ranks

of people, is often afraid to send her son to school at a sea-port

town, lest the sight of the ships, and the conversation and adven-

tures of the sailors, should entice him to go to sea. The distant

prospect of hazards, from which we can hope to extricate our-

selves by courage and address, is not disagreeable to us, and does

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