As the greatest part of the drudgery is to be done by daylight, so it is by this only that they actually measure the time of their labour without any thought of the hours they are employed, or the weariness they feel; and the hireling in the country must get up in the morning, not because he has rested enough, but because the sun is going to rise. This last article alone would be an intolerable hardship to grown people under thirty, who, during nonage, had been used to lie a-bed as long as they could sleep: but all three together make up such a condition of life, as a man more mildly educated would hardly choose, though it should deliver him from a gaol or a shrew. If such people there must be, as no great nation can be happy without vast numbers of them, would not a wise legislature cultivate the breed of them with all imaginable care, and provide against their scarcity as he would prevent the scarcity of provision itself? No man would be poor, and fatigue himself for a livelihood, if he could help it: The absolute necessity all stand in for victuals and drink, and in cold climates for clothes and lodging, makes them submit to any thing that can be bore with. If nobody did want, nobody would work; but the greatest hardships are looked upon as solid pleasures, when they keep a man from starving. From what has been said, it is manifest, that in a free nation, where slaves are not allowed of, the surest wealth consists in a multitude of laborious poor; for besides that they are the never-failing nursery of fleets and armies, without them there could be no enjoyment, and no product of any country could be valuable. To make the society happy, and people easy under the meanest circumstances, it is requisite that great numbers of them should be ignorant, as well as poor. Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our desires, and the fewer things a man wishes for, the more easily his necessities may be supplied. The welfare and felicity, therefore, of every state and kingdom, require that the knowledge of the working poor should be confined within the verge of their occupations, and never extended (as to things visible), beyond what relates to their calling. The more a shepherd, a ploughman, or any other peasant, knows of the world, and the things that are foreign to his labour or employment, the less fit he will be to go through the fatigues and hardships of it with cheerfulness and content.