The interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as
strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the first.
The wages of the labourer, it has already been shewn, are never so high as
when the demand for labour is continually rising, or when the quantity
employed is every year increasing considerably. When this real wealth of the
society becomes stationary, his wages are soon reduced to what is barely
enough to enable him to bring up a family, or to continue the race of
labourers. When the society declines, they fall even below this. The order
of proprietors may perhaps gain more by the prosperity of the society than
that of labourers; but there is no order that suffers so cruelly from its
decline. But though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with
that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest,
or of understanding its connexion with his own. His condition leaves him no
time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are
commonly such as to render him unfit to judge, even though he was fully
informed. In the public deliberations, therefore, his voice is little heard,
and less regarded; except upon particular occasions, when his clamour is
animated, set on, and supported by his employers, not for his, but their own
particular purposes.

His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit.
It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into
motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and
projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most
important operation of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those
plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages,
rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On
the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and
it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin. The