An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
History
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
labour and the admiration for their persons. The most eminent of them,
however, appear always to have enjoyed a degree of consideration much
superior to any of the like profession in the present times. The Athenians
sent Carneades the academic, and Diogenes the stoic, upon a solemn embassy
to Rome; and though their city had then declined from its former grandeur,
it was still an independent and considerable republic.
Carneades, too, was a Babylonian by birth; and as there never was a people
more jealous of admitting foreigners to public offices than the Athenians,
their consideration for him must have been very great.
This inequality is, upon the whole, perhaps rather advantageous than
hurtful to the public. It may somewhat degrade the profession of a public
teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage
which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency. The public, too,
might derive still greater benefit from it, if the constitution of those
schools and colleges, in which education is carried on, was more
reasonable than it is at present through the greater part of Europe.
Thirdly, the policy of Europe, by obstructing the free circulation of
labour and stock, both from employment to employment, and from place to
place, occasions, in some cases, a very inconvenient inequality in the
whole of the advantages and disadvantages of their different employments.
The statute of apprenticeship obstructs the free circulation of labour
from one employment to another, even in the same place. The exclusive
privileges of corporations obstruct it from one place to another, even in
the same employment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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