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 surmounting
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 London,
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 between
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 recommend
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
adventures of the sailors, should entice him to
go to sea. The distant prospect of hazards,
from which we can hope to extricate ourselves
by courage and address, is not disagreeable to
us, and does not raise the wages of labour in
any employment. It is otherwise with those
in which courage and address can be of no
avail. In trades which are known to be very
unwholesome, the wages of labour are always
remarkably high. Unwholesomeness is a species
of disagreeableness, and its effects upon
the wages of labour are to be ranked under
that general head.
In all the different employments of stock,
the ordinary rate of profit varies more or less
with the certainty or uncertainty of the returns.
These are, in general, less uncertain
in the inland than in the foreign trade, and in
some branches of foreign trade than in others;
in the trade to North America, for example,
than in that to Jamaica. The ordinary rate
of profit always rises more or less with the
risk. It does not, however, seem to rise in
proportion to it, or so as to compensate it
completely. Bankruptcies are most frequent
in the most hazardous trades. The most hazardous
of all trades, that of a smuggler, though,
when the adventure succeeds, it is likewise the
most profitable, is the infallible road to bankruptcy.
The presumptuous hope of success
seems to act here as upon all other occasions,
and to entice so many adventurers into those
hazardous trades, that their competition reduces
the profit below what is sufficient to
compensate the risk. To compensate it completely,
the common returns ought, over and
above the ordinary profits of stock, not only
to make up for all occasional losses, but to
afford a surplus profit to the adventurers, of
the same nature with the profit of insurers.
But if the common returns were sufficient for
all this, bankruptcies would not be more frequent
in these than in other trades.
Of the five circumstances, therefore, which
vary the wages of labour, two only affect the
profits of stock; the agreeableness or disagreeableness
of the business, and the risk or security
with which it is attended. In point of
agreeableness or disagreeableness, there is little
or no difference in the far greater part of the
different employments of stock, but a great
deal in those of labour; and the ordinary profit
of stock, though it rises with the risk, does
not always seem to rise in proportion to it.
It should follow from all this, that, in the
same society or neighbourhood, the average
and ordinary rates of profit in the different
employments of stock should be more nearly
upon a level than the pecuniary wages of the
different sorts of labour.
They are so accordingly. The difference
between the earnings of a common labourer
and those of a well employed lawyer or physician,
is evidently much greater than that between
the ordinary profits in any two different
branches of trade. The apparent difference,
besides, in the profits of different trades, is
generally a deception arising from our not
always distinguishing what ought to be considered
as wages, from what ought to be considered
as profit.
Apothecaries' profit is become a bye-word,
denoting something uncommonly extravagant.
This great apparent profit, however, is frequently
no more than the reasonable wages of
labour. The skill of an apothecary is a much
nicer and more delicate matter than that of
any artificer whatever; and the trust which is
reposed in him is of much greater importance.
He is the physician of the poor in all cases,
and of the rich when the distress or danger is
not very great. His reward, therefore, ought