his command of the necessaries of life remains unchanged. And, in like manner, the cheapening of articles consumed by any portion of the community improves their condition; and, in the ordinary progress of society, those improvements which tend to multiply the comforts of life increase more rapidly than those that merely tend to augment the population.

CHAPTER II.

ON INDUSTRY.

Τα χρηματ' ανθρωποισι τιμιωτατα

Δυναμιν τε πλειστην των εν ανθρωποις εχει.

EURIPIDES.

EVERYTHING that tends to diversify the remuneration of labourers, by giving different rates of wages to different descriptions of workmen, promotes industry, by affording each labourer a greater facility of raising the scale of his own remuneration. But where the qualifications required in a labourer are simple, and his reward unvarying, he has no inducement to extraordinary diligence.

It is the number and minuteness of the grades in society that enable the poor man to rise to wealth. The same talents, energy, and perseverance that have raised a man the first step

above his original condition, may enable him to surmount the second; but if that first step had been beyond his reach, in his original condition he must permanently have remained.

Where the cheapness of the different articles of enjoyment, compared with the rate of wages, brings a number of comforts within the reach of the labourer, he will generally be found industrious; where every additional exertion enables him to attain some new object of desire, he will naturally try to augment his earnings. Where, however, the artificial comforts of life are dear, as compared with his wages, he will probably be indolent; for his additional earnings can be turned to little account: a respite from labour being almost the only luxury that his industry can procure him.

Somewhat similar to this, is the case of a workman whose skill enables him to earn more than his fellow-labourers, if his habits of life are the same as theirs; for thus, having no additional object of desire, he often spends a part of his time in idleness, or consumes his extra wages

in drunkenness.

But give him new wants, and

you stimulate him to increased industry.

Adam Smith observes, that "where wages are high, we find workmen more active, diligent, and industrious, than where they are low. In England, for instance, than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of great towns, than in more remote places.' This is the case, not only with reference to the time that they are willing to work, but also to the intensity of their exertions while they are employed. Wages, as we have seen before, are the sum received by the labourer for his employment for a certain time; and differ from the price of labour, which is the sum paid for work done. So that if a labourer is industrious in a greater proportion than his wages are high, work may be performed cheaper by paying higher wages and this is an every-day occurrence, even in the most ordinary description of labour.

When a work is let out to a contractor to be finished for a certain sum, he usually finds it his * "Wealth of Nations," vol. i. p. 104.

interest to pay his men higher wages than they could otherwise earn, that he may be able to command their fullest exertions; knowing, from experience, that by paying higher wages he can secure a greater profit to himself.

Before a Committee of the House of Commons on artisans and machinery, in 1824, one of the witnesses, who had been two years in a manufactory in Alsace, stated that the French make their yarn at a greater expense than the English, though they have their hands for much less wages than in England. He was of opinion that an English spinner would do as much work in six hours as a French spinner would in ten.

It is a common remark of those who have had experience of labourers both in England and Ireland, that though the labourer in Ireland is paid much lower wages than the labourer in England, yet, from his slovenly way of working, it costs nearly as much to get the same work done in Ireland as it does in England. what is still more remarkable, although this complaint of inertness is made against the labourer in Ireland, when that same individual

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