endeavours to bring under strict regulations,
what in its own nature seems incapable of minute
limitation; for if all persons in the same
kind of work were to receive equal wages,
there would be no emulation, and no room
left for industry or ingenuity."
Particular acts of parliament, however, still
attempt sometimes to regulate wages in particular
trades, and in particular places. Thus
the 8th of George III. prohibits, under heavy
penalties, all master tailors in London, and
five miles round it, from giving, and their
workmen from accepting, more than two shillings
and sevenpence halfpenny a-day, except
in the case of a general mourning. Whenever
the legislature attempts to regulate the
differences between masters and their workmen,
its counsellors are always the masters.
When the regulation, therefore, is in favour
of the workmen, it is always just and equitable;
but it is sometimes otherwise when in
favour of the masters. Thus the law which
obliges the masters in several different trades
to pay their workmen in money, and not in
goods, is quite just and equitable. It imposes
no real hardship upon the masters. It only
obliges them to pay that value in money, which
they pretended to pay, but did not always
really pay, in goods. This law is in favour of
the workmen; but the 8th of George III. is
in favour of the masters. When masters combine
together, in order to reduce the wages of
their workmen, they commonly enter into a
private bond or agreement, not to give more
than a certain wage, under a certain penalty.
Were the workmen to enter into a contrary
combination of the same kind, not to accept
of a certain wage, under a certain penalty, the
law would punish them very severely, and,
if it dealt impartially, it would treat the masters
in the same manner. But the 8th of
George III. enforces by law that very regulation
which masters sometimes attempt to establish
by such combinations. The complaint
of the workmen, that it puts the ablest and
most industrious upon the same footing with
an ordinary workman, seems perfectly well
founded.
In ancient times, too, it was usual to attempt
to regulate the profits of merchants and
other dealers, by regulating the price of
provisions and other goods. The assize of bread
is, so far as I know, the only remnant of this
ancient usage. Where there is an exclusive
corporation, it may, perhaps, he proper to
regulate the price of the first necessary of life;
but, where there is none, the competition will
regulate it much better than any assize. The
method of fixing the assize of bread, established
by the 81st of George II. could not be put
in practice in Scotland, on account of a defect
in the law, its execution depending upon the
office of clerk of the market, which does not
exist there. This defect was not remedied till
the third of George III. The want of an assize
occasioned no sensible inconveniency;
and the establishment of one in the few places
where it has yet taken place has produced no
sensible advantage. In the greater part of the
towns in Scotland, however, there is an
incorporation of bakers, who claim exclusive
privileges, though they are not very strictly
guarded.
The proportion between the different rates,
both of wages and profit, in the different employments
of labour and stock, seems not to
be much affected, as has already been
observed, by the riches or poverty, the advancing,
stationary, or declining state of the society.
Such revolutions in the public welfare, though
they affect the general rates both of wages and
profit, must, in the end, affect them equally in
all different employments. The proportion
between them, therefore, must remain the
same, and cannot well be altered, as least for
any considerable time, by any such revolutions.
CHAP. XI.
OF THE RENT OF LAND.
Rent, considered as the price paid for the use
of land, is naturally the highest which the
tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances
of the land. In adjusting the terms
of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave
him no greater share of the produce than what
is sufficient to keep up the stock from which
he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and
purchases and maintains the cattle and other
instruments of husbandry, together with the
ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood.
This is evidently the smallest share
with which the tenant can content himself,
without being a loser, and the landlord seldom
means to leave him any more. Whatever
part of the produce, or, what is the same
thing, whatever part of its price, is over and
above this share, he naturally endeavours to
reserve to himself as the rent of his land,
which is evidently the highest the tenant can
afford to pay in the actual circumstances of
the land. Sometimes, indeed, the liberality,
more frequently the ignorance, of the landlord,
makes him accept of somewhat less than
this portion; and sometimes, too, though more
rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him
undertake to pay somewhat more, or to content
himself with somewhat less, than the ordinary
profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood.
This portion, however, may still
be considered as the natural rent of land, or
the rent at which it is naturally meant that
land should, for the most part, be let.
The rent of land, it may be thought, is
frequently no more than a reasonable profit or