book iv. chap. v. p. 221.

[674] 'In all countries where there is a tolerable security, every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command, in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit.' _Wealth of Nations_, book ii. chap. i. p. 115.

[675] 'The consideration of his own private profit is the sole motive which determines the owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, in manufactures, or in some particular branch of the wholesale or retail trade.' _Wealth of Nations_, book ii. chap. v. p. 154.

[676] 'By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.' _Wealth of Nations_, book iv. chap. ii. p. 184.

In this way, Adam Smith completely changes the premisses which he had assumed in his earlier work. Here, he makes men naturally selfish; formerly, he had made them naturally sympathetic.[677] Here, he represents them as pursuing wealth for sordid objects, and for the narrowest personal pleasures; formerly he represented them as pursuing it out of regard to the sentiments of others, and for the sake of obtaining their sympathy.[678] In the _Wealth of Nations_, we hear no more of this conciliatory and sympathetic spirit; such amiable maxims are altogether forgotten, and the affairs of the world are regulated by different principles. It now appears that benevolence and affection have no influence over our actions. Indeed, Adam Smith will hardly admit common humanity into his theory of motives. If a people emancipate their slaves, it is a proof, not that the people are acted on by high moral considerations, nor that their sympathy is excited by the cruelty inflicted on these unhappy creatures. Nothing of the sort. Such inducements to conduct are imaginary, and exercise no real sway. All that the emancipation proves, is, that the slaves were few in number, and, therefore, small in value. Otherwise, they would not have been emancipated.[679]

[677] In his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 21, he says that mankind are 'naturally sympathetic.'

[678] 'Nay, it is chiefly for this regard to the sentiments of mankind, that we pursue riches and avoid poverty.' _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 66. 'To become the natural object of the joyous congratulations and sympathetic attentions of mankind, is, in this manner, the circumstance which gives to prosperity all its dazzling splendour.' p. 78.

[679] 'The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania, to set at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property, such a resolution could never have been agreed to.' _Wealth of Nations_, book iii. chap. ii. p. 159.

So, too, while in his former work, he had ascribed the different systems of morals to the power of sympathy, he, in this work, ascribes them entirely to the power of selfishness. He observes, that, among the lower ranks of society, dissipation is more fatal to individuals, than it is among the higher ranks. The extravagance which dissipation produces, may injure the fortune of a wealthy man, but the injury is usually capable of being repaired, or, at all events, he can indulge his vices for years without completely destroying his fortune, and without bringing himself to utter ruin. To the labourer, a similar indulgence would be fatal in a single week; it would not merely reduce him to beggary, and perhaps send him to jail, but it would destroy his future prospects, by taking away that character for sobriety and regularity on which his employment depends. Hence, the better class of common people, guided by their interest, look with aversion on excesses which they know to be fatal; while the upper ranks finding that a moderate amount of vice hurts neither their purse nor their reputation consider such license to be one of the advantages which their fortune confers, and they value, as one of the privileges belonging to their station, the liberty of indulging themselves without being censured. Therefore it is, that they who dissent from the established Church have a purer system of morals, or, at all events, an austerer one, than they who agree with it. For, new religious sects usually begin among the common people, the thinking part of whom are, by their interest, driven to strict views of the duties of life. Consequently, the advocates of the new opinion profess a similar strictness, seeing that it is the surest means of increasing their proselytes. Thus it is that sectaries and heretics, governed by interest rather than by principle, adopt a code of morals which is suited to their own purpose, and the rigidity of which is strongly contrasted with the laxer code of more orthodox believers.[680] Owing to the operation of the same principle, we also find, that, among the orthodox themselves, the clergy embrace a stricter system of morals in countries where church benefices are nearly equal than they do in countries where the benefices are very unequal. This is because, when all the benefices are nearly equal, none can be very rich, and, consequently, even the most conspicuous among the clergy will have but small incomes. But a man who has little to spend can have no influence, unless his morals are exemplary. Having no wealth to give him weight the vices of levity would make him ridiculous. To avoid contempt, and also to avoid the expense which a looseness of conduct occasions, and which his narrow circumstances cannot afford, he has but one remedy, and that remedy he adopts. He retains his influence, and saves his pocket, by protesting against pleasures which he cannot conveniently enjoy; in this, as in all other cases, pursuing that plan of life which his own interest urges him to follow.[681]

[680] 'In every civilized society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally revered and admired by the common people; the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called the people of fashion. The degree of disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the liberal, or loose system, luxury, wanton, and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two sexes, provided they are not accompanied with gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood and injustice, are generally treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, these excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single week's thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for ever, and to drive him, through despair, upon committing the most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people, therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to people of their condition. The disorder and extravagance of several years, on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion; and people of that rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of excess, as one of the advantages of their fortune; and the liberty of doing so without censure or reproach, as one of the privileges which belong to their station. In people of their own station, therefore, they regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and censure them either very slightly or not at all.

'Almost all religious sects have begun among the common people, from whom they have generally drawn their earliest as well as their most numerous proselytes. The austere system of morality has, accordingly, been adopted by those sects almost constantly, or with very few exceptions; for there have been some. It was the system by which they could best recommend themselves to that order of people, to whom they first proposed their plan of reformation upon what had been before established. Many of them, perhaps the greater part of them, have even endeavoured to gain credit by refining upon this austere system, and by carrying it to some degree of folly and extravagance; and this excessive rigour has frequently recommended them, more than any thing else, to the respect and veneration of the common people.' ... 'In little religious sects, accordingly, the morals of the common people have been almost always remarkably regular and orderly; generally much more so than in the established church. The morals of those little sects, indeed, have frequently been rather disagreeably rigorous and unsocial.' _Wealth of Nations_, book v. chap. i. pp. 332, 333.

[681] 'Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may, no doubt, be carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. Nothing but exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. The vices of levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides, almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem and affection, by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him to follow.' _Wealth of Nations_, book v. chap. i. p. 340.

In these striking generalizations, which, though they contain a large amount of truth, are far from containing the whole truth, no room is left for the magnanimous parts of our nature to act; but the system of morals, prevailing at any one time or in any one class, is solely ascribed to the dictates of unalloyed selfishness. Adam Smith, by reasoning from this principle, with that exquisite subtlety which characterized his mind, explains many other circumstances which society presents, and which at first sight appear incongruous. According to the old notions, which, indeed, are not yet quite extinct, those who received wages were under a personal obligation to those who paid them; that is to say, they were under a moral obligation, over and above the obligation of performing certain services. It was believed that a master could not only select what servants he chose, but could pay them what he chose; or, at all events, that it was the will of the masters, considered as a body, which fixed the usual and average rate of wages.[682] The lower classes were, therefore, much indebted to the higher ones for giving them so much as they did; and it was incumbent upon all persons, who received wages, to take them with humble thankfulness, and with a feeling of gratitude, on account of the favour bestowed upon them by the generosity of their superiors.

[682] Besides the evidence supplied by economical treatises, the laws in our statute-book, respecting wages, show the general conviction, that their rate could be fixed by the upper classes.

This doctrine, so convenient to the upper classes of society, and so natural to the universal ignorance which formerly prevailed on these matters, began to be shaken by the speculative thinkers of the seventeenth century; but it was reserved for the eighteenth century to overthrow it, by letting in the great idea of necessity, and proving, that the rate of wages established in a country, was the inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which that country was placed, and had no connexion with the wishes of any individual, or, indeed, with the wishes of any class. To all instructed persons, this is now a familiar truth. Its discovery has excluded the notion of gratitude from the pecuniary relation between employers and employed, and has made known that servants or workmen who receive wages, have no more reason to be grateful than those who pay them. For, no choice having been exercised in fixing the wages, no favour can be conferred in their payment. The whole process is compulsory, and is the result of what had previously happened. Scarcely had the eighteenth century passed away, when this most important discovery was completed. It was decisively proved, that the reward of labour depends solely on two things; namely, the magnitude of that national fund out of which all labour is paid, and the number of the labourers among whom the fund is to be divided.

This vast step in our knowledge is due, mainly, though not entirely, to Malthus, whose work on Population, besides marking an epoch in the history of speculative thought, has already produced considerable practical results, and will probably give rise to others more considerable still. It was published in 1798; so that Adam Smith, who died in 1790, missed what to him would have been the intense pleasure of seeing how, in it, his own views were expanded rather than corrected. Indeed, it is certain, that without Smith there would have been no Malthus; that is, unless Smith had laid the foundation, Malthus could not have raised the superstructure. It was Adam Smith, who, far more than any other man, introduced the conception of uniform and necessary sequence into the apparently capricious phenomena of wealth, and who studied those phenomena by the aid of principles, of which selfishness alone supplied the data. According to his view, the employers of labour have, as employers, no benevolence, no sympathy, no virtue of any kind. Their sole aim is, their own selfish interest. They are constantly engaged in a tacit, if not in an open, combination, to prevent the lower ranks from being benefited by a rise of wages; and they sometimes combine for the purpose even of depressing those wages below their actual rate.[683] Having no bowels, they think only of themselves. The idea of their wishing to mitigate the inequalities of fortune, is to be exploded as one of the chimeras of that protective spirit, which imagined that society could not go on, unless the richer classes relieved the poorer ones, and sympathized with their troubles. This antiquated notion is further rebutted by the fact, that wages are always higher in summer than in winter, although the expenses which a labourer incurs in winter, being heavier than in summer, he ought, on principles of common humanity, to receive more money during the more expensive season.[684] In the same way, in years of scarcity, the dearness of food causes many persons to go to service, in order to support their families. The masters, instead of charitably paying such servants more on account of the unfortunate position in which they are placed, avail themselves of that position to pay them less. They make better terms for themselves; they lower wages just at the moment when sympathy for misfortune would have raised them; and, as they find that their servants, besides being worse remunerated, are, by poverty, made more submissive, they consider that scarcity is a blessing, and that dear years are to be commended as more favourable to industry than cheap ones.[685]

[683] 'We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and, one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.' _Wealth of Nations_, book i. chap. viii. p. 28.

[684] 'First, in almost every part of Great Britain, there is a distinction, even in the lowest species of labour, between summer and winter wages. Summer wages are always highest. But, on account of the extraordinary expense of fuel, the maintenance of a family is most expensive in winter. Wages, therefore, being highest when this expense is lowest, it seems evident that they are not regulated by what is necessary for this expense, but by the quantity and supposed value of the work.' _Wealth of Nations_,