suburbs, where the workmen, having no exclusive
privilege, have nothing but their character
to depend upon, and you must then
smuggle it into the town as well as you can.
It is in this manner that the policy of Europe,
by restraining the competition in some
employments to a smaller number than would
otherwise be disposed to enter into them, occasions
a very important inequality in the
whole of the advantages and disadvantages of
the different employments of labour and stock.
Secondly, The policy of Europe, by increasing
the competition in some employments beyond
what it naturally would be, occasions
another inequality, of an opposite kind, in the
whole of the advantages and disadvantages of
the different employments of labour and stock.
It has been considered as of so much importance
that a proper number of young people
should be educated for certain professions,
that sometimes the public, and sometimes the
piety of private founders, have established
many pensions, scholarships, exhibitions, bursaries,
&c. for this purpose, which draw many
more people into those trades than could
otherwise pretend to follow them. In all
Christian countries, I believe, the education
of the greater part of churchmen is paid for
in this manner. Very few of them are educated
altogether at their own expense. The
long, tedious, and expensive education, therefore,
of those who are, will not always procure
them a suitable reward, the church being
crowded with people, who, in order to get
employment, are willing to accept of a much
smaller recompence than what such an education
would otherwise have entitled them to;
and in this manner the competition of the
poor takes away the reward of the rich. It
would be indecent, no doubt, to compare
either a curate or a chaplain with a journeyman
in any common trade. The pay of a
curate or chaplain, however, may very properly
be considered as of the same nature with
the wages of a journeyman. They are all
three paid for their work according to the
contract which they may happen to make
with their respective superiors. Till after the
middle of the fourteenth century, five merks,
containing about as much silver as ten pounds
of our present money, was in England the
usual pay of a curate or a stipendiary parish
priest, as we find it regulated by the decrees of
several different national councils. At the same
period, fourpence a-day, containing the same
quantity of silver as a shilling of our present
money, was declared to be the pay of a master
mason; and threepence a-day, equal to
ninepence of our present money, that of a
journeyman mason[13]. The wages of both
these labourers, therefore, supposing them to
have been constantly employed, were much
superior to those of the curate. The wages
of the master mason, supposing him to have
been without employment one-third of the
year, would have fully equalled them. By
the 12th of Queen Anne, c. 12. it is declared,
'That whereas, for want of sufficient maintenance
and encouragement to curates, the
cures have, in several places, been meanly
supplied, the bishop is, therefore, empowered
to appoint, by writing under his hand
and seal, a sufficient certain stipend or allowance,
not exceeding fifty, and not less
than twenty pounds a-year.' Forty pounds
a-year is reckoned at present very good pay for
a curate; and, notwithstanding this act of
parliament, there are many curacies under
twenty pounds a-year. There are journeymen
shoemakers in London who earn forty
pounds a-year, and there is scarce an industrious
workman of any kind in that metropolis
who does not earn more than twenty.
This last sum, indeed, does not exceed what
is frequently earned by common labourers in
many country parishes. Whenever the law
has attempted to regulate the wages of workmen,
it has always been rather to lower them
than to raise them. But the law has, upon
many occasions, attempted to raise the wages of
curates, and, for the dignity of the church, to
oblige the rectors of parishes to give them
more than the wretched maintenance which
they themselves might be willing to accept of.
And, in both cases, the law seems to have
been equally ineffectual, and has never either
been able to raise the wages of curates, or to
sink those of labourers to the degree that was
intended; because it has never been able to
hinder either the one from being willing to
accept of less than the legal allowance, on account
of the indigence of their situation and
the multitude of their competitors, or the
other from receiving more, on account of the
contrary competition of those who expected
to derive either profit or pleasure from employing
them.
The great benefices and other ecclesiastical
dignities support the honour of the church,
notwithstanding the mean circumstances of
some of its inferior members. The respect
paid to the profession, too, makes some compensation
even to them for the meanness of
their pecuniary recompence. In England,
and in all Roman catholic countries, the lottery
of the church is in reality much more advantageous
than is necessary. The example
of the churches of Scotland, of Geneva, and
of several other protestant churches, may satisfy
us, that in so creditable a profession, in
which education is so easily procured, the
hopes of much more moderate benefices will
draw a sufficient number of learned, decent,
and respectable men into holy orders.
In professions in which there are no benefices,
such as law and physic, if an equal proportion
of people were educated at the public
expense, the competition would soon be so