for the supply of food, are as rational as the dread entertained in the time of the Stuarts that the excessive growth of London must sooner or later end in dearth or even famine.

But though there seems no great risk of over-population in any country whose fiscal system is sound, and whose foreign trade is encouraged by being freed from restrictions, temporary instances of an excessive supply of labour do occur, and furnish, as long as they exist, apparent exceptions to the general principle laid down in the foregoing pages, as to the remuneration of labour being on an average due to the cost of producing it.

For example, the remuneration of those who are engaged in what are called the liberal professions, represents a less percentage on the outlay incurred in fitting persons for these professions than cæteris paribus is awarded to humbler offices. Here however social position forms part of the incentive to entering into these callings, and therefore diminishes the remuneration. People press into a calling which is held in honour, which gives independence or dignity. The payment made on an average to a barrister, a physician, a clergyman, an officer in the regular army, is less, when the labour given is considered and the preparation requisite for fulfilling the function is estimated, than that awarded to a retail trader. It is not that men are paid by reputation and social standing, but that men compete for these objects, and thereupon compete against each other with greater energy for such remunerations as these callings afford. And conversely, when any discredit attaches to the calling, the competition is scanty and the remuneration is high. As Adam Smith says, the labour performed by a common hangman is easy, but

the remuneration is very high. The office is in the fullest sense discreditable; there is no competition for filling it; the service, it seems, must needs be performed, and the functionary can exact what terms he pleases, short, of course, of such a sum as would attract others (who might conquer their squeamishness by their desire of gain) into the field of operations.

Again, the risk of an over-supply of labour attends such offices as are liable to the unforeseen caprices of fashion. Female costume is, it seems, affected, in wealthy countries at least, by extraordinary and unintelligible fickleness. Sudden changes occur, the origin of which cannot be traced, the duration of which cannot be anticipated. Those who minister to these precarious demands are consequently liable, more than any other artisans, to the contingency of over-production, to the revulsion of demand, and to the suspension of occupation. A year or two ago, every woman who made any pretension to dress according to the custom of the day, surrounded herself with a congeries of parallel steel hoops. It is said that fifty tons of crinoline wire were turned out weekly from factories, chiefly in Yorkshire. The fashion has passed away, and the demand for the material and the labour has ceased. Thousands of persons once engaged in this production are now reduced to enforced idleness, or constrained to betake themselves to some other occupation. Again, a few years ago women decked themselves plentifully with ribbons. This fashion has also changed: where a hundred yards were sold, one is hardly purchased now, and the looms of a multitude of silk operatives are idle. To quote another instance. At the present time women are pleased to walk about bareheaded. The

straw-platters of Bedfordshire, Bucks, Hertfordshire, and Essex are reduced suddenly from a condition of tolerable prosperity to one of great penury and distress.

The most serious inconvenience however ensues, when the supply of any important raw material is materially diminished or arrested. As a rule, the phenomenon of a glut in the labour market attends any great exaltation in the price of food; for food, as has been stated more than once, is the raw material of labour, must be procured at any sacrifice, and therefore when it happens to be very dear, the consumption of such articles as are of voluntary use must needs be diminished. In dear years the home trade is stunted, that industry which is ordinarily engaged in matters of domestic convenience, comfort, taste, or luxury, is less in demand, and the only labour which is likely to be engaged is that which is occupied in production for such foreign markets as, directly or indirectly, can contribute to the demand for food. When however the deficiency of the raw material is on a grand scale, as happened five years ago with the supply of cotton, the gravest consequences follow-consequences a little palliated by the growth of analogous industries, but not materially remedied.

Excess of labour is not peculiar to the mechanical or manual occupations in which men engage. The proximity of persons in the higher classes of society to the margin of bare subsistence is not indeed witnessed frequently, but it is constantly seen to be close upon the margin of comfortable or decent or customary subsistence. It is seldom, for example, that a poor clergyman, or medical practitioner, or barrister, is literally starving; but he may be, and constantly is, close upon penury, and

forced to unbecoming or squalid shifts. On the whole, to be sure, these cases are exceptional, and when persons become more alive to the conditions under which different kinds of labour can subsist, will become scarcer; but every one is aware of how urgently these prudential motives to which Malthus referred are present with the professional classes.

CHAPTER IX.

Restrictions on Occupations.

Of course all persons who are engaged in any calling are aware that the demand for the labour or products of labour in that calling remaining stationary, greater competition will mean diminished remuneration. As a rule, too, those who practise any craft or profession are slow to believe that an increased supply will be met by a corresponding demand, and therefore feel naturally concerned to occupy and retain the market for their own labour or products. They attempt to bring about or maintain this result, either by keeping up prices artificially, or by putting artificial checks on the supply of labour. Hence ensue some of the most significant phenomena in the working of society phenomena the interpretation of which is rendered obscure by the fact that a number of irrelevant issues and indirect arguments are alleged in support of the customs adopted by such parties, while the true motives are generally denied.

In the early ages of European social history the control. over the market of the trader or producer was secured, or

supposed to be secured, by the establishment of guilds or trading companies. These guilds were universal, and the character of such associations is suggested by the great companies which still survive, though in an altered form, in the city of London. The general purpose of these associations was that of prohibition. No trader

was allowed to exercise his calling within the privileged district unless he were enrolled in these protected bodies, which ordinarily (in consideration of certain sums given to the Crown, at that time supposed to be the fountain of such privileges) had the right of framing bye-laws for the management of their several trades. It is of course obvious that the companies conceded the right of trade sparingly, and under well-defined and strict regulations. Such guilds exist at the present time in Munich, and exhibit faithfully the character of similar incorporations in England, as they were one or two centuries ago.

In course of time, the Crown assumed to itself the right of permitting associations of merchants a monopoly of particular trades or commerce. The privileges accorded by our monarchs to the merchants of the Hanse Towns, trading as the Alderman and Merchants of the Steelyard, are among the earliest of these mercantile monopolies. The discovery of the New World gave birth to another set of privileged merchants. That of the Cape passage, and of the sea route to the East, were the occasions out of which a third set of adventurers were chartered. At last, when the Crown began to grant monopolies of home trade and production to particular. individuals, the country became indignant, and the prerogative was surrendered.

But it was found that the grant of trading privileges