An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

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The Wealth of Nations

fore, by each course of lectures, a thousand minae, or £ 3335:6:8.

A thousand minae, accordingly, is said by Plutarch, in another

place, to have been his didactron, or usual price of teaching. Many

other eminent teachers in those times appear to have acquired

great fortunes. Georgias made a present to the temple of Delphi

of his own statue in solid gold. We must not, I presume, suppose

that it was as large as the life. His way of living, as well as that of

Hippias and Protagoras, two other eminent teachers of those times,

is represented by Plato as splendid, even to ostentation. Plato him-

self is said to have lived with a good deal of magnificence. Aristotle,

after having been tutor to Alexander, and most munificently re-

warded, as it is universally agreed, both by him and his father,

Philip, thought it worth while, notwithstanding, to return to Ath-

ens, in order to resume the teaching of his school. Teachers of the

sciences were probably in those times less common than they came

to be in an age or two afterwards, when the competition had prob-

ably somewhat reduced both the price of their labour and the

admiration for their persons. The most eminent of them, how-

ever, appear always to have enjoyed a degree of consideration much

superior to any of the like profession in the present times. The

Athenians sent Carneades the academic, and Diogenes the stoic,

upon a solemn embassy to Rome; and though their city had then

declined from its former grandeur, it was still an independent and

considerable republic.

Carneades, too, was a Babylonian by birth; and as there never

was a people more jealous of admitting foreigners to public offices

than the Athenians, their consideration for him must have been

very great.

This inequality is, upon the whole, perhaps rather advantageous

than hurtful to the public. It may somewhat degrade the profes-

sion of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is

surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling incon-

veniency. The public, too, might derive still greater benefit from

it, if the constitution of those schools and colleges, in which edu-

cation is carried on, was more reasonable than it is at present

through the greater part of Europe.

Thirdly, the policy of Europe, by obstructing the free circula-

tion of labour and stock, both from employment to employment,

and from place to place, occasions, in some cases, a very inconve-

nient inequality in the whole of the advantages and disadvantages

of their different employments.

The statute of apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of

labour from one employment to another, even in the same place.

The exclusive privileges of corporations obstruct it from one place

to another, even in the same employment.

It frequently happens, that while high wages are given to the

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Adam Smith

workmen in one manufacture, those in another are obliged to

content themselves with bare subsistence. The one is in an ad-

vancing state, and has therefore a continual demand for new hands;

the other is in a declining state, and the superabundance of hands

is continually increasing. Those two manufactures may sometimes

be in the same town, and sometimes in the same neighbourhood,

without being able to lend the least assistance to one another. The

statute of apprenticeship may oppose it in the one case, and both

that and an exclusive corporation in the other. In many different

manufactures, however, the operations are so much alike, that the

workmen could easily change trades with one another, if those

absurd laws did not hinder them. The arts of weaving plain linen

and plain silk, for example, are almost entirely the same. That of

weaving plain woollen is somewhat different; but the difference is

so insignificant, that either a linen or a silk weaver might become

a tolerable workman in a very few days. If any of those three capi-

tal manufactures, therefore, were decaying, the workmen might

find a resource in one of the other two which was in a more pros-

perous condition; and their wages would neither rise too high in

the thriving, nor sink too low in the decaying manufacture. The

linen manufacture, indeed, is in England, by a particular statute,

open to every body; but as it is not much cultivated through the

greater part of the country, it can afford no general resource to the

work men of other decaying manufactures, who, wherever the stat-

ute of apprenticeship takes place, have no other choice, but dither

to come upon the parish, or to work as common labourers; for

which, by their habits, they are much worse qualified than for any

sort of manufacture that bears any resemblance to their own. They

generally, therefore, chuse to come upon the parish.

Whatever obstructs the free circulation of labour from one em-

ployment to another, obstructs that of stock likewise; the quantity

of stock which can be employed in any branch of business de-

pending very much upon that of the labour which can be em-

ployed in it. Corporation laws, however, give less obstruction to

the free circulation of stock from one place to another, than to

that of labour. It is everywhere much easier for a wealthy mer-

chant to obtain the privilege of trading in a town-corporate, than

for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it.

The obstruction which corporation laws give to the free circula-

tion of labour is common, I believe, to every part of Europe. That

which is given to it by the poor laws is, so far as I know, peculiar to

England. It consists in the difficulty which a poor man finds in

obtaining a settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his in-

dustry in any parish but that to which he belongs. It is the labour of

artificers and manufacturers only of which the free circulation is

obstructed by corporation laws. The difficulty of obtaining settle-

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