those who live by wages:
The interest of … those who live by wages, is … strictly connected with
the interest of the society … The wages of the labourer … are never so high as when the demand for labour is continually rising, or when the quantity employed is every year increasingconsiderably. When this real wealth of the society becomes stationary, … wages are soon reduced to what is barely enough to enable him to bring up a family. When the society declines, they fall even below this. … there is no order that suffers so cruelly from … decline. In the public deliberations … his voice is little heard, and less regarded; except upon particular occasions when his clamour is animated.
employers, …
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.