WEALTH OF NATIONS. 221 



men and others who do not fix and realize their skill 

 or their work in any exchangeable commodity at all. 

 Dr. Smith shows with irresistible force of reasoning 

 and great felicity of illustration, the great errors of this 

 theory; and he reckons manufacturers and traders 

 productive labourers ; but then he excludes from this 

 class all the labour of professional men. Dr. Smith's 

 arguments on this subject are partly contained in this, 

 the third chapter of the second book, and partly, 

 indeed chiefly in the ninth chapter of the third book, 

 under the head of Agricultural Systems of Political 

 Economy. I believe it may now be safely affirmed, 

 that his reasoning is generally admitted to be erro- 

 neous ; and that as the Economists were wrong in draw- 

 ing the line between productive and unproductive 

 labour, so as to exclude that of traders and manu- 

 facturers, he is equally wrong in so drawing it as to 

 exclude that of professional men. It is now generally 

 admitted that the defence, the police, the government 

 in general of a country, increasing the value of its 

 whole capital, is as productive a labour as that of the 

 locksmith who protects portions of the capital from 

 pillage, or the trader who transports it from place to 

 place ; and that the efforts of those who instruct, or 

 rationally amuse the community, give new value to its 

 capital, which their labour enables the owner to expend 

 in purchasing education or entertainment. 



It seems now agreed that in the complicated system 

 of civilized society, indeed in any society where the 

 division of labour is carried to any considerable extent, 

 it becomes wholly impossible to say who feeds, who 

 clothes, who instructs, who defends, who amuses the 

 community, as it is to say which of the farm servants 

 raises the crop, or which of the artisans makes the 

 machine or the tool ; and that nothing can be more 

 unsound than the distinction drawn between one kind 

 of labour and another, because one realizes nothing 

 tangible, its produce vanishing in the act of its pro- 



