pence in the shilling, than the English. Secondly, Wherever wages are high, universally throughout ⚫ the whole world, it is an infallible evidence of the fiches of that country; and wherever wages for labour run low, it is a proof of the poverty of that place. Thirdly, It is multitudes of people, and good laws, such as cause an increase of people, which principally enrich any country; and if we retrench by law the labour of our people, we drive them from us to other countries that give better rates; and so the Dutch have drained us of our seamen and woollen manufacturers, and we the • French of their artificers and silk-manufacturers; and many more we should, if our laws otherwise gave them fitting encouragement; of which more in due place. Fourthly, If any particular trades exact more here than in Holland, they are only • such as'do it by virtue of incorporations, privileges, ⚫ and charters, of which the cure is easy, by an act of naturalization, and without compulsory laws. It is true, our great grandfathers did exercise such policy, of endeavouring to retrench the price of labour by a law (although they could never effect it); but that was before trade was introduced into ⚫ this kingdom; we are since, with the rest of the trading world, grown wiser in this matter, and I hope shall so continue *??

To this I reply, 1. That the making such a law is not only an honest, but a charitable project; as it proposes, by retrenching the price of poor men's Jabour, to provide labour, and consequently hire for all the poor who are capable of labour. In all manufactures whatever, the lower the price of labour is, the cheaper will be the price to the consumer; and the cheaper this price is, the greater will be the consumption, and consequently the more hands employed. This is likewise a very charitable law to

* Preface to his Discourse on Trade,

the poor farmer, and never more necessary than at this day, when the rents of lands are rated to the highest degree. The great hopes which the farmer hath (indeed his common relief from ruin) is of an exportation of corn. This exportation cannot be by law, unless where the corn is under such a particular price. How necessary then is it to him that the price of labour should be confined within moderate bounds, that the exportation of corn, which is of such general advantage to the kingdom, should turn, in any considerable manner, to his private profit? and what reason is there to imagine that this power of limiting wages should be executed in any dis

Is it not a power

honest or uncharitable manner? entrusted to all the justices of the county or division, and to the sheriff, with the assistance of grave, sober, and substantial persons, who must be sufficient judges of the matter, and who are directed to have regard to the plenty and scarcity of the times? Is it to be suspected that many persons of this kind should unite in a cruel and flagitious act, by which they would be liable to the condemnation of their own consciences, to the curses of the poor, and to be reproached by the example of all their neighbouring counties? Are not much grosser exorbitances to be feared on the other side, when the lowest artificers, husbandmen, and labourers, are made judges in their own cause; and when it is left to their own discretion to exact what price they please for their labour of the poor farmer or clothier; of whom if they cannot exact an extravagant price they will fly to that alternative, which idleness often prefers, of begging or stealing? Lastly, such a restraint. is very wholesome to the poor labourers themselves; of whom sir Josiah observes, That they live better in the • dearest countries for provisions than in the cheapest, and better in a dear year than in a cheap, especi

ally in relation to the public good; for in a cheap year they will not work above two days in a week; their humour being such that they will not provide for a hard time, but just work so much, and no more, as may maintain them in that mean condition to which they have been accustomed.' Is it not therefore, upon this concession, demonstrable, that the poor man himself will live much better (his family certainly will, by these means? Again, many of the poor, and those the more honest and industrious, will probably gain by such a law; for, at the same time that the impudent and idle, if left to themselves, will certainly exact on their masters; the modest, the humble, and truly laborious, may often (and so I doubt not but the case is) be oppressed by them, and forced to accept a lower price for their labour than the liberality of gentlemen would allow them.

2dly, The two assertions contained in the next paragraph both seem to me suspicious. First, that the Dutch and other nations have done all that in them lies to draw from us our seamen, and some of our manufacturers, is certainly true; and this they would do at any price; but that the Dutch do in general give more wages to their manufacturers than the English, is, I believe, not the fact. Of the manufacturers of Holland, the only considerable article which we ourselves take of them, except linen, are toys; and to this we are induced, not because the Dutch are superior to our workmen in genius and dexterity (points in which they are not greatly celebrated), but because they work much cheaper. Nor is, 2dly, the immediate transition from trade to manufacture altogether so fair. The Dutch, it is true, are principally our rivals in trade in general, and chiefly as carriers; but not so in manufacture, particularly in the woollen manufacture. Here our chief rivals are the French, amongst whom the price of labour is known to be consider

ably lower than with us. To this, among other causes (for I know there are others, and some very scandalous ones) they owe their success over us in the Levant. It is, indeed, a truth which needs no comment nor proof, that where goods are of equal value, the man who sells cheapest will have the most custom; and it is as certainly true, that he who makes up his goods in the cheapest manner can sell them so.

3dly, Sir Josiah asserts, That wherever wages are high, universally throughout the world, 'tis an infallible evidence of the riches of that country; ' and wherever wages for labour run low, it is a proof ' of the poverty of that place.'-If this be true the concession will do him no service; for it will not prove, that to give high wages is the way to grow rich; since it is much more probable that riches should cause the advance of wages than that high wages should produce riches. This latter, I am sure, would appear a high solecism in private life, and I believe it is no less so in public.

4thly, His next assertion, That to retrench by law the labour of our people is to drive them from us, hath partly received an answer already. To give this argument any force our wages must be reduced at least below the standard of other countries; which is, I think, very little to be apprehended; but, on the contrary, if the labourer should carry his demands ever so little higher, as may be reasonably expected, the consumption of many manufactures will not only be confined to our own people but to a very few of those people.

Thus, I hope, I have given a full answer to this great man, whom I cannot dismiss without obserying a manifest mistake of the question, which runs through all his arguments; all that he advances concluding, indeed, only to the quantum of wages which shall be given for labour. He seems rather to argue against giving too little than against regulating

what is to be given; so that his arguments are more proper for the consideration of the justices at their meeting for settling the rates of wages than for the consideration of the legislature in a debate concerning the expediency of the above law. To evince the expediency of which I appeal to the concurrent sense of parliament in so many different ages; for this is not only testified expressly in the above statute of Elizabeth and James, but may be fairly implied from those of Edward VI. and George I. above recited.

I have moreover, I think, demonstrated, 1. The equity of this law; and that it is as much for the service of the labourer as of his master. 2. The utility of it to trade: I shall only add the necessity of it, in order to execute the intention of the legislature, in compelling the idle to work; for is it not the same thing to have the liberty of working or not at your own pleasure, and to have the absolute nomination of the price at which you will work? the idleness of the common people in this town is, indeed, greatly to be attributed to this liberty; most of these, if they cannot exact an exorbitant price for their labour, will remain idle. The habit of exacting on their superiors is grown universal, and the very porters expect to receive more for their work than the salaries of above half the officers of the army amount to.

I conclude then that this law is necessary to be revived (perhaps with some enlargements), and that still upon one account more; which is, to enable the magistrate clearly to distinguish the corrigible from the incorrigible in idleness; for when the price of labour is once established, all those poor who shall refuse to labour at that price, even at the command of a magistrate, may properly be deemed incorrigibly idle.

For these the legislature have, by several acts of parliament, provided a punishment, by commitment