Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the
rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most
agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once
followed from necessity. In the advanced state of society, therefore,
they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people
pursue as a pastime. Fishermen have been so since the time of
Theocritus. A poacher is every-where a very poor man in Great Britain.
In countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the
licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. The natural taste
for those employments makes more people follow them than can live
comfortably by them, and the produce of their labour, in proportion to
its quantity, comes always too cheap to market to afford any thing but
the most scanty subsistence to the labourers.
From The Wealth of Nations:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN4.html#I.10.6
Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity. In the advanced state of society, therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime. Fishermen have been so since the time of Theocritus. A poacher is every-where a very poor man in Great Britain. In countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. The natural taste for those employments makes more people follow them than can live comfortably by them, and the produce of their labour, in proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market to afford any thing but the most scanty subsistence to the labourers.