144 ADAM SMITH. 



profits of stock the agreeableness or disagreeableness of 

 the trade, and the scarcity or risk attending it. 



2. Were industry and commerce left free, these in- 

 equalities alone could affect wages and profits ; but the 

 policy of states has added to these causes of inequality 

 several others, which disturb the natural rate of both 

 wages and profits much more than the circumstances 

 already enumerated. 



(1.) The laws requiring several years' apprenticeship 

 to be served before trades can be set up, prevent the free 

 circulation of labour both from place to place, and from 

 one profession to another. They tend to give a mono- 

 poly to both employers and capitalists, and thus to lower 

 the wages of labour, and raise the profits of stock. The 

 various other restrictions imposed by corporations have a 

 like tendency. 



(2.) Institutions for encouraging one kind of industry, 

 and giving it a power greater than it naturally would 

 possess, have the effect of drawing more to it than would 

 naturally resort to it, and thus, from the numbers who 

 must fail, lower the wages of labour. Free schools and 

 colleges are liable to this imputation, which, however, 

 Dr. Smith admits to be much corrected by the important 

 benefits conferred if education is thus made materially 

 better or cheaper. 



(3.) The exclusive privileges of corporations produce 

 the same effect in obstructing the free circulation of both 

 labour and capital from place to place, and in the same 

 trade, which the laws of apprenticeship do in preventing 

 the circulation of labour from place to place, and from 

 trade to trade. The poor laws of England are shown by 

 Dr. Smith to have the most mischievous effects on the 



