Walter allowed that it was a thing out of the question to give up a settlement in a corporate town in exchange for one in a district like this, whose prosperity must long remain precarious. He scarcely saw how this precariousness was to be remedied if there was a dearth of workmen to do the business essential to the improvement of the place, while there was elsewhere a superabundance of the very sort of workmen wanted. If it was necessary to give very high wages here for work which received very low wages elsewhere, it was difficult to perceive how any fair competition was to be maintained, and the subsistence fund duly husbanded. “I suppose,” said he, “you may thank the law that gave you your apprentice privileges for the low wages you have had of late, Adam?” “O yes; plenty to thank that law for. People generally complain that it raises wages higher than natural. I am ready to testify to its sinking them lower.” “Both are right, I fancy. Wages are raised, as said, by crafts being confined to fewer hands than need be; and this mischief goes on from generation to generation.” “Why, yes; if they first make it necessary to be an apprentice, and then forbid the taking more than a certain number of apprentices, it is easy to see how many willing folks will be hindered of entering into a trade; and those that are in it may keep up wages as long as their handiwork is wanted. But when——” “Ah! when the balance turns, and times are bad, wages may fall to the very lowest point, or cease, if the craftsmen are hindered from withdrawing some of their number, and turning their hands to some other trade. It does seem an uncommonly stupid plan, to be sure; and when men were beginning to get the better of it, and outgrow and step over it, what a strange thing it seems that a clergyman, like Mr. Otley, should be doing his best to fasten us down under it again, tighter than ever!” “And at the very time that his lady is sending here and sending there for articles that she cannot content herself to buy in her native place. If the gentleman does his best to prevent his neighbours working out of corporation bounds, the least his lady can do is to employ those neighbours, instead of buying what she wants from a distance.” “I think so. But what puts such a fancy into her head?” “She complains that the workmanship of articles is inferior at home to what it is in newer places. And if it is, who is to blame for it but those who meddle to spoil competition, and persuade their own workmen that they have a sure dependence otherwise than on their own skill?”