An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

In order to restore, in some measure, that free circulation of labour which those different

statutes had almost entirely taken away, the invention of certificates was fallen upon. By the

8th and 9th of William III. it was enacted that if any person should bring a certificate from the

parish where he was last legally settled, subscribed by the churchwardens and overseers of

the poor, and allowed by two justices of the peace, that every other parish should be obliged to

receive him; that he should not be removable merely upon account of his being likely to

become chargeable, but only upon his becoming actually chargeable ; and that then the parish

which granted the certificate should be obliged to pay the expense both of his maintenance

and of his removal. And in order to give the most perfect security to the parish where such

certificated man should come to reside, it was further enacted by the same statute, that he

should gain no settlement there by any means whatever, except either by renting a tenement of

ten pounds a-year, or by serving upon his own account in an annual parish office for one

whole year ; and consequently neither by notice nor by service, nor by apprenticeship, nor by

paying parish rates. By the 12th of Queen Anne, too, stat. 1, c.18, it was further enacted, that

neither the servants nor apprentices of such certificated man should gain any settlement in the

parish where he resided under such certificate.

How far this invention has restored that free circulation of labour, which the preceding

statutes had almost entirely taken away, we may learn from the following very judicious

observation of Doctor Burn. “It is obvious,” says he, ” that there are divers good reasons for

requiring certificates with persons coming to settle in any place; namely, that persons residing

under them can gain no settlement, neither by apprenticeship, nor by service, nor by giving

notice, nor by paying parish rates; that they can settle neither apprentices nor servants ; that if

they become chargeable, it is certainly known whither to remove them, and the parish shall be

paid for the removal, and for their maintenance in the mean time ; and that, if they fall sick,

and cannot be removed, the parish which gave the certificate must maintain them ; none of all

which can be without a certificate. Which reasons will hold proportionably for parishes not

granting certificates in ordinary cases; for it is far more than an equal chance, but that they

will have the certificated persons again, and in a worse condition.” The moral of this

observation seems to be, that certificates ought always to be required by the parish where any

poor man comes to reside, and that they ought very seldom to be granted by that which he

purposes to leave. ” There is somewhat of hardship in this matter of certificates,” says the

same very intelligent author, in his History of the Poor Laws, “by putting it in the power of a

parish officer to imprison a man as it were for life, however inconvenient it may be for him to

continue at that place where he has had the misfortune to acquire what is called a settlement,

or whatever advantage he may propose himself by living elsewhere.”

Though a certificate carries along with it no testimonial of good behaviour, and certifies

nothing but that the person belongs to the parish to which he really does belong, it is

altogether discretionary in the parish officers either to grant or to refuse it. A mandamus was

once moved for, says Doctor Burn, to compel the churchwardens and overseers to sign a

certificate; but the Court of King’s Bench rejected the motion as a very strange attempt.

The very unequal price of labour which we frequently find in England, in places at no great

distance from one another, is probably owing to the obstruction which the law of settlements

gives to a poor man who would carry his industry from one parish to another without a

certificate. A single man, indeed who is healthy and industrious, may sometimes reside by

sufferance without one ; but a man with a wife and family who should attempt to do so,

would, in most parishes, be sure of being removed ; and, if the single man should afterwards

marry, he would generally be removed likewise. The scarcity of hands in one parish,

therefore, cannot always be relieved by their superabundance in another, as it is constantly in

Scotland, and. I believe, in all other countries where there is no difficulty of settlement. In

such countries, though wages may sometimes rise a little in the neighbourhood of a great

town, or wherever else there is an extraordinary demand for labour, and sink gradually as the

distance from such places increases, till they fall back to the common rate of the country ; yet

we never meet with those sudden and unaccountable differences in the wages of neighbouring

places which we sometimes find in England, where it is often more difficult for a poor man to

pass the artificial boundary of a parish, than an arm of the sea, or a ridge of high mountains,

natural boundaries which sometimes separate very distinctly different rates of wages in other

countries.

To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour, from the parish where he chooses to

reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice. The common people of England,

however, so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of most other countries, never

rightly understanding wherein it consists, have now, for more than a century together, suffered

themselves to be exposed to this oppression without a remedy. Though men of reflection, too,

have some. times complained of the law of settlements as a public grievance ; yet it has never

been the object of any general popular clamour, such as that against general warrants, an

abusive practice undoubtedly, but such a one as was not likely to occasion any general

oppression. There is scarce a poor man in England, of forty years of age, 1 will venture to say,

who has not, in some part of his life, felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill-contrived

law of settlements.

I shall conclude this long chapter with observing, that though anciently it was usual to rate

wages, first by general laws extending over the whole kingdom, and afterwards by particular

orders of the justices of peace in every particular county, both these practices have now gone

entirely into disuse ” By the experience of above four hundred years,” says Doctor Burn, ” it

seems time to lay aside all 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 ether 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, be 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 31st 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, at least for any considerable time, by any such

revolutions.

CHAPTER 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