Chapter X

OF WAGES AND PROFIT IN THE DIFFERENT EMPLOYMENTS OF LABOUR AND STOCK.

The whole of the advantages and disadvantages of the different employments
of labour and stock, must, in the same neighbourhood, be either perfectly
equal, or continually tending to equality. If, in the same neighbourhood,
there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than
the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many
would desert it in the other, that its advantages would soon return to the
level of other employments. This, at least, would be the case in a society
where things were left to follow their natural course, where there was
perfect liberty, and where every man was perfectly free both to choose
what occupation he thought proper, and to change it as often as he thought
proper. Every man’s interest would prompt him to seek the advantageous,
and to shun the disadvantageous employment.

Pecuniary wages and profit, indeed, are everywhere in Europe extremely
different, according to the different employments of labour and stock. But
this difference arises, partly from certain circumstances in the
employments themselves, which, either really, or at least in the
imagination of men, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some, and
counterbalance a great one in others, and partly from the policy of
Europe, which nowhere leaves things at perfect liberty.

The particular consideration of those circumstances, and of that policy,
will divide this Chapter into two parts.