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Secondly, this equality in the whole of the advantages and

disadvantages of the different employments of labour and stock,

can take place only in the ordinary, or what may be called the

natural state of those employments.

The demand for almost every different species of labour is

sometimes greater, and sometimes less than usual. In the one

case, the advantages of the employment rise above, in the other

they fall below the common level. The demand for country labour

is greater at hay-time and harvest than during the greater part

of the year; and wages rise with the demand. In time of war, when

forty or fifty thousand sailors are forced from the merchant

service into that of the king, the demand for sailors to merchant

ships necessarily rises with their scarcity; and their wages,

upon such occasions, commonly rise from a guinea and

seven-and-twenty shillings to forty shillings and three pounds

a-month. In a decaying manufacture, on the contrary, many

workmen, rather than quit their own trade, are contented with

smaller wages than would otherwise be suitable to the nature of

their employment.