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 profession
of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary
education is surely an advantage which
greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency.
The public, too, might derive still
greater benefit from it, if the constitution of
those schools and colleges, in which education
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 circulation of labour and stock,
both from employment to employment, and
from place to place, occasions, in some cases,
a very inconvenient 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 workmen in one manufacture,
those in another are obliged to content
themselves with bare subsistence. The
one is in an advancing 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 capital manufactures, therefore,
were decaying, the workmen might find
a resource in one of the other two which was
in a more prosperous 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 workmen
of other decaying manufactures, who,
wherever the statute of apprenticeship takes
place, have no other choice, but either 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 employment to another, obstructs
that of stock likewise; the quantity of
stock which can be employed in any branch
of business depending very much upon that
of the labour which can be employed 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
merchant 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 circulation 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 industry 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
settlements obstructs even that of common
labour. It may be worth while to give
some account of the rise, progress, and present
state of this disorder, the greatest, perhaps,
of any in the police of England.
When, by the destruction of monasteries, the
poor had been deprived of the charity of those
religious houses, after some other ineffectual
attempts for their relief, it was enacted, by the
43d of Elizabeth, c. 2. that every parish
should be bound to provide for its own poor,
and that overseers of the poor should be annually
appointed, who, with the church-wardens,
should raise, by a parish rate, competent sums
for this purpose.
By this statute, the necessity of providing
for their own poor was indispensably imposed
upon every parish. Who were to be considered
as the poor of each parish became,
therefore, a question of some importance.
This question, after some variation, was at
last determined by the 13th and 14th of
Charles II. when it was enacted, that forty
days undisturbed residence should gain any
person a settlement in any parish; but that
within that time it should be lawful for two
justices of the peace, upon complaint made
by the church-wardens or overseers of the
poor, to remove any new inhabitant to the
parish where he was last legally settled; unless
he either rented a tenement of ten pounds