An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
General
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
No married man can well gain any settlement in either of the two last
ways. An apprentice is scarce ever married; and it is expressly enacted,
that no married servant shall gain any settlement by being hired for a
year. The principal effect of introducing settlement by service, has
been to put out in a great measure the old fashion of hiring for a year;
which before had been so customary in England, that even at this day, if
no particular term is agreed upon, the law intends that every servant is
hired for a year. But masters are not always willing to give their
servants a settlement by hiring them in this manner; and servants are
not always willing to be so hired, because, as every last settlement
discharges all the foregoing, they might thereby lose their original
settlement in the places of their nativity, the habitation of their
parents and relations.
No independent workman, it is evident, whether labourer or artificer, is
likely to gain any new settlement, either by apprenticeship or by
service. When such a person, therefore, carried his industry to a new
parish, he was liable to be removed, how healthy and industrious soever,
at the caprice of any church-warden or overseer, unless he either rented
a tenement of ten pounds a-year, a thing impossible for one who has
nothing but his labour to live by, or could give such security for the
discharge of the parish as two justices of the peace should judge
sufficient.
What security they shall require, indeed, is left altogether to their
discretion; but they cannot well require less than thirty pounds, it
having been enacted, that the purchase even of a freehold estate of less
than thirty pounds value, shall not gain any person a settlement, as not
being sufficient for the discharge of the parish. But this is a security
which scarce any man who lives by labour can give; and much greater
security is frequently demanded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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