Who said it? mbs
"Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people
to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconvenience to the society? The
answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, laborers, and
workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great
political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part
can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can
surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the
members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who
feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a
share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well
fed, clothed, and lodged.
The liberal reward of labor, as it encourages the propagation, so it
increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labor 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 laborer, 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."