ficate 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 removeable 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. i. 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 Dr. Burn.1 '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 meantime; 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 proposes to leave. 1 Burn's Justice, vol. ii. p. 274, edit. 1764.

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 to 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 Dr. 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 whereever 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 sometimes 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, I 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 Dr. Burn, it seems time to lay aside all endeavours to bring under strict regulations, what in its own nature scems 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 III1 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

1 Repealed in 1825.

The reason is obvious, for the masters alone had an effective voice in the legis lature. The same reason will account for that which Adam Smith expresses his astonishment at above, the different feeling entertained against parochial settlement and general warrants. The former

2

affected the poor and unrepresented classes only, the latter imperilled those who could make themselves heard in Parliament. It is hardly necessary to say, that the justice of a legislature is not to be so much relied on, as the control of those who can constitute the legislature itself.

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. 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.2

But

In ancient times too it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers, by rating the price both 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 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

If an

1 The truck system, alluded to in the text, is now uniformly illegal. employer pays in goods, he may be made to pay the wages agreed on in money as woll. It is probable that, in many cases, the truck system saved the artisan or labourer from the hands of retail dealers; but the evils of the system were greater and more general than its indirect or occasional benefits.

The complaint of the workman in Adam Smith's time, is the complaint of the employer and the public now, under the operation of trades-unions. These

combinations, by their voluntary regulations, have put the workman into exactly that position which the workman depre

cated as the effect of the statute alluded to.

There is no reason to doubt that this statement is correct. But the Assize of Bread, one of the oldest statutes in the body of English law, provided only for the rate which the baker should charge for his labour in making bread. The legis lature has not abandoned its privilege of fixing prices. It puts a maximum on railway fares, and attempts to define rigidly the rate at which hackney carringes should ply in the metropolis. It may be doubted however, in the latter case, whether it would not be better to allow the owner of the carriage to fix his own fare, provided always that he put the rate conspicuously on his carriage.

law; its execution depending upon the office of clerk of the market, which does not exist there. This defect was not remedied till the 3rd 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 of 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.2

ENT, 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

please, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the

The London assize was repealed in 1815. It still legally exists in country places, but is obsolete.

It is well known that this part of Smith's work has been criticised by Anderson, West, Ricardo, and Macculloch, who insist that rent is the price paid for the natural and inherent qualitics or fertilitics of the soil, and that rent has arisen from the fact that as society has increased numerically, it has become necessary to tako inferior lands into cultivation. Hence, it is alleged, rent is the difference between the produce of the poorest soil, that is, the soil which will only just remunerate the culti

vator, and that of the best, that is, the soil which produces the greatest amount at the least cost. A number of inferences have been drawn from this the so-called Ricardian theory of rent.

This view of the origin of rent could not have been unknown to Adam Smith. It is thus stated by Turgot, Sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, § 10:

La terre so peuplait, et on la défrichait de plus en plus. Les meilleures terres se trouvèrent à la longue toutes occupées; il ne resta plus pour les derniers venus que des terrains stériles, rebutés par les premiers. Mais à la fin toute terre trouva