The market price of any particular commodity, though it may continue long
above, can seldom continue long below, its natural price. Whatever part of
it was paid below the natural rate, the persons whose interest it affected
would immediately feel the loss, and would immediately withdraw either so
much land or no much labour, or so much stock, from being employed about it,
that the quantity brought to market would soon be no more than sufficient to
supply the effectual demand. Its market price, therefore, would soon rise to
the natural price; this at least would be the case where there was perfect
liberty.

The same statutes of apprenticeship and other corporation laws, indeed,
which, when a manufacture is in prosperity, enable the workman to raise his
wages a good deal above their natural rate, sometimes oblige him, when it
decays, to let them down a good deal below it. As in the one case they
exclude many people from his employment, so in the other they exclude him
from many employments. The effect of such regulations, however, is not near
so durable in sinking the workman's wages below, as in raising them above
their natural rate. Their operation in the one way may endure for many
centuries, but in the other it can last no longer than the lives of some of
the workmen who were bred to the business in the time of its prosperity.
When they are gone, the number of those who are afterwards educated to the
trade will naturally suit itself to the effectual demand. The policy must be
as violent as that of Indostan or ancient Egypt (where every man was bound
by a principle of religion to follow the occupation of his father, and was
supposed to commit the most horrid sacrilege if he changed it for another),
which can in any particular employment, and for several generations
together, sink either the wages of labour or the profits of stock below
their natural rate.