much with both. In China and Indostan, accordingly,
both the rank and the wages of
country labourers are said to be superior to
those of the greater part of artificers and manufacturers.
They would probably be so
everywhere, if corporation laws and the corporation
spirit did not prevent it.
The superiority which the industry of the
towns has everywhere in Europe over that of
the country, is not altogether owing to corporations
and corporation laws. It is supported
by many other regulations. The high duties
upon foreign manufactures, and upon all
goods imported by alien merchants, all tend
to the same purpose. Corporation laws enable
the inhabitants of towns to raise their
prices, without fearing to be undersold by the
free competition of their own countrymen.
Those other regulations secure them equally
against that of foreigners. The enhancement
of price occasioned by both is everywhere finally
paid by the landlords, farmers, and labourers,
of the country, who have seldom opposed
the establishment of such monopolies.
They have commonly neither inclination nor
fitness to enter into combinations; and the
clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers
easily persuade them, that the private
interest of a part, and of a subordinate
part, of the society, is the general interest of
the whole.
In Great Britain, the superiority of the industry
of the towns over that of the country
seems to have been greater formerly than in
the present times. The wages of country labour
approach nearer to those of manufacturing
labour, and the profits of stock employed
in agriculture to those of trading and manufacturing
stock, than they are said to have
done in the last century, or in the beginning
of the present. This change may be regarded
as the necessary, though very late consequence
of the extraordinary encouragement
given to the industry of the towns. The
stocks accumulated in them come in time to
be so great, that it can no longer be employed
with the ancient profit in that species of industry
which in peculiar to them. That industry
has its limits like every other; and the
increase of stock, by increasing the competition,
necessarily reduces the profit. The lowering
of profit in the town forces out stock to
the country, where, by creating a new demand
for country labour, it necessarily raises its
wages. It then spreads itself, if I may say
so, over the face of the land, and, by being
employed in agriculture, is in part restored to
the country, at the expense of which, in a
great measure, it had originally been accumulated
in the town. That everywhere in Europe
the greatest improvements of the country
have been owing to such overflowings of the
stock originally accumulated in the towns, I
shall endeavour to shew hereafter, and at the
same time to demonstrate, that though some
countries have, by this course, attained to a
considerable degree of opulence, it is in itself
necessarily slow, uncertain, liable to be disturbed
and interrupted by innumerable accidents,
and, in every respect, contrary to the
order of nature and reason. The interests,
prejudices, laws, and customs, which have
given occasion to it, I shall endeavour to explain
as fully and distinctly as I can in the
third and fourth books of this Inquiry.
People of the same trade seldom meet together,
even for merriment and diversion, but
the conversation ends in a conspiracy against
the public, or in some contrivance to raise
prices. It is impossible, indeed, to prevent
such meetings, by any law which either could
be executed, or would be consistent with liberty
and justice. But though the law cannot
hinder people of the same trade from
sometimes assembling together, it ought to do
nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much
less to render them necessary.
A regulation which obliges all those of the
same trade in a particular town to enter their
names and places of abode in a public register,
facilitates such assemblies. It connects
individuals who might never otherwise be
known to one another, and gives every man
of the trade a direction where to find every
other man of it.
A regulation which enables those of the
same trade to tax themselves, in order to provide
for their poor, their sick, their widows
and orphans, by giving them a common interest
to manage, renders such assemblies necessary.
An incorporation not only renders them necessary,
but make the act of the majority
binding upon the whole. In a free trade, an
effectual combination cannot be established
but by the unanimous consent of every single
trader, and it cannot last longer than every
single trader continues of the same mind.
The majority of a corporation can enact a bye-law,
with proper penalties, which will limit
the competition more effectually and more
durably than any voluntary combination whatever.
The pretence that corporations are necessary
for the better government of the trade, is
without any foundation. The real and effectual
discipline which is exercised over a workman,
is not that of his corporation, but that
of his customers. It is the fear of losing their
employment which restrains his frauds and
corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation
necessarily weakens the force of this
discipline. A particular set of workmen must
then be employed, let them behave well or ill.
It is upon this account that, in many large
incorporated towns, no tolerable workmen are
to be found, even in some of the most necessary
trades. If you would have your work
tolerably executed, it must be done in the