Sayfa 260 / 2651

The most detestable of all employments, that of public

executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done,

better paid than any common trade whatever.

Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in

the rude state of society, become, in its advanced state, their

most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they

once followed from necessity. In the advanced state of society,

therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade,

what other people pursue as a pastime. Fishermen have been so

since the time of Theocritus. {See Idyllium xxi.}. A poacher is

everywhere a very poor man in Great Britain. In countries where

the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the licensed hunter is

not in a much better condition. The natural taste for those

employments makes more people follow them, than can live

comfortably by them; and the produce of their labour, in

proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market, to

afford any thing but the most scanty subsistence to the

labourers.