ly want intelligence or industry to augment what
their father got, and the grandsons have generally dissipation enough
to squander entirely away what remains. This is so frequent a case in
London, that it may be called the regular routine of the business; and,
what arises by regular routine, must be derived from some general and
natural cause.

{75} In the chapter on Education, this subject is entered into more
fully, and the education of women makes a principal part. A subject
not noticed by the author of the Wealth of Nations, though very
important.
-=-

[end of page #87]

a nation becomes rich, is a proof that it is not in capital cities alone
that the effect takes place, but over the whole of a country. {76}

In England, the number of inhabitants is about six times the number of
those in Scotland; and, perhaps, it costs twice as much to maintain a
poor person in the former as in the latter. The sum necessary for the
maintenance of the poor in England may then be reckoned at about
twelve times as much as in Scotland, in order to preserve a just
proportion between the two countries. But the poor cost more than
sixty times as much in England as in Scotland; that is, at least five
times more than the true proportion that ought to be !!!

This, it may be said, is owing to the different manner of managing the
business, and, in some degree, it no doubt is; {77} but, as the poor are
only maintained in England, and as they are also maintained in
Scotland, it would be wrong to allow so great a difference for that
alone.

In order, however, to put the matter out of all doubt, let us compare
England with itself, and we shall find that the poor's rates, or the
expense of maintaining the indigent, has increased more rapidly than
the price of provisions, or the price of labour. This ought not to be the
case, as they would only have augmented in the same proportion,
unless the number of poor was increased as well as the price of the
provisions they eat, at the same time that the nation is growing more
wealthy.

Of whom do the poor in every nation consist, but of the lame, the sick,
the infirm, the aged, or children unprovided for? Of those, the number,
in proportion to the total number of inhabitants, will be pretty nearly
the same at all times; for it is nature that produces this species of
helpless poverty. It would then appear that there is another species of
poverty, not of nature's creation, that comes in and destroy