fortune, and sometimes our life and reputation,
to the lawyer and attorney. Such confidence
could not safely be reposed in people of
a very mean or low condition. Their reward
must be such, therefore, as may give them
that rank in the society which so important a
trust requires. The long time and the great
expense which must be laid out in their education,
when combined with this circumstance,
necessarily enhance still further the price of
their labour.
When a person employs only his own stock
in trade, there is no trust; and the credit
which he may get from other people, depends,
not upon the nature of the trade, but upon
their opinion of his fortune, probity and prudence.
The different rates of profit, therefore,
in the different branches of trade, cannot arise
from the different degrees of trust reposed in
the traders.
Fifthly, the wages of labour in different
employments vary according to the probability
or improbability of success in them.
The probability that any particular person
shall ever be qualified for the employments
to which he is educated, is very different in
different occupations. In the greatest part of
mechanic trades, success is almost certain;
but very uncertain in the liberal professions.
Put your son apprentice to a shoemaker, there
is little doubt of his learning to make a pair of
shoes; but send him to study the law, it as
at least twenty to one if he ever makes such
proficiency as will enable him to live by the
business. In a perfectly fair lottery, those
who draw the prizes ought to gain all that is
lost by those who draw the blanks. In a profession,
where twenty fail for one that succeeds,
that one ought to gain all that should
have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty.
The counsellor at law, who, perhaps, at near
forty years of age, begins to make something
by his profession, ought to receive the retribution,
not only of his own so tedious and expensive
education, but of that of more than
twenty others, who are never likely to make
any thing by it. How extravagant soever the
fees of counsellors at law may sometimes appear,
their real retribution is never equal to
this. Compute, in any particular place, what
is likely to be annually gained, and what is
likely to be annually spent, by all the different
workmen in any common trade, such as
that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will
find that the former sum will generally exceed
the latter. But make the same computation
with regard to all the counsellors and students
of law, in all the different Inns of court,
and you will find that their annual gains bear
but a very small proportion to their annual
expense, even though you rate the former as
high, and the latter as low, as can well be
done. The lottery of the law, therefore, is
very far from being a perfectly fair lottery;
and that, as well as many other liberal and
honourable professions, is, in point of pecuniary
gain, evidently under-recompensed.
Those professions keep their level, however,
with other occupations; and, notwithstanding
these discouragements, all the most generous
and liberal spirits are eager to crowd into
them. Two different causes contribute to recommend
them. First, the desire of the reputation
which attends upon superior excellence
in any of them; and, secondly, the natural
confidence which every man has, more
or less, not only in his own abilities, but in
his own good fortune.
To excel in any profession, in which but
few arrive at mediocrity, it is the most decisive
mark of what is called genius, or superior
talents. The public admiration which attends
upon such distinguished abilities makes
always a part of their reward; a greater of
smaller, in proportion as it is higher or lower
in degree. It makes a considerable part of
that reward in the profession of physic; a still
greater, perhaps, in that of law; in poetry
and philosophy it makes almost the whole.
There are some very agreeable and beautiful
talents, of which the possession commands
a certain sort of admiration, but of which the
exercise, for the sake of gain, is considered,
whether from reason or prejudice, as a sort of
public prostitution. The pecuniary recompence,
therefore, of those who exercise them
in this manner, must be sufficient, not only to
pay for the time, labour, and expense for acquiring
the talents, but for the discredit which
attends the employment of them as the means
of subsistence. The exorbitant rewards of
players, opera-singers, opera-dancers, &c. are
founded upon those two principles; the rarity
and beauty of the talent, and the discredit of
employing them in this manner. It seems
absurd at first sight, that we should despise
their persons, and yet reward their talents with
the most profuse liberality. While we do the
one, however, we must of necessity do the
other. Should the public opinion of prejudice
ever alter with regard to such occupations,
their pecuniary recompence would
quickly diminish. More people would apply
to them, and the competition would quickly
reduce the price of their labour. Such talents,
though far from being common, are by no
means so rare as imagined. Many people
possess them in great perfection, who disdain
to make this use of them; and many more
are capable of acquiring them, if any thing
could be made honourably by them.
The over-weening conceit which the great
part of men have of their own abilities, is an
ancient evil remarked by the philosophers and
moralists of all ages. Their absurd presumption
in their own good fortune has been less
taken notice of. It is, however, if possible,
still more universal. There is no man living,
who, when in tolerable health and spirits, has
not some share of it. The chance of gain is