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The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation,

so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of

labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other

human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it

receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength

of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his

condition, and of ending his days, perhaps, in ease and plenty,

animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages

are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more

active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low; in

England, for example, than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of

great towns, than in remote country places. Some workmen, indeed,

when they can earn in four days what will maintain them through

the week, will be idle the other three. This, however, is by no

means the case with the greater part.