276 ADAM SMITH. 



than Dr. Smith has not scrupled to rank the capital sunk 

 in the public debt, or spent in warfare, in the same class 

 with the property consumed by fire, and the labour destroyed 

 by pestilence. He ought surely to have reflected, that the 

 debts of a country are always contracted, and its wars en- 

 tered into, for some purpose either of security or aggran- 

 dizement ; and that stock thus employed must have pro- 

 duced an equivalent, which cannot be asserted of property 

 or population absolutely destroyed. This equivalent ma;y 

 have been greater or less ; that is, the money spent for use- 

 ful purposes may have been applied with more or less 

 prudence and frugality. Those purposes, too, may have 

 been more or less useful ; and a certain degree of waste and 

 extravagance always attends the operations of funding and 

 of war. But this must only be looked upon as an addition to 

 the necessary price at which the benefits in view are to be 

 bought. The food of a country, in like manner, may be 

 used with different degrees of economy ; and the necessity 

 of eating may be supplied at more or less cost. So long 

 as the love of war is a necessary evil in human nature, it is 

 absurd to denominate the expenses unproductive that are 

 incurred by defending a country ; or, which is the same 

 thing, preventing an invasion, by a judicious attack of an 

 enemy; or, which is also the same thing, avoiding the ne- 

 cessity of war by a prudent system of foreign policy. And 

 he who holds the labour of soldiers and sailors and diplo- 

 matic agents to be unproductive, commits precisely the 

 same error as he who should maintain that the labour of 

 the hedger is unproductive, because he only protects, and 

 does not rear the crop. All those kinds of labour and em- 

 ployments of stock, are parts of the system, and all are 

 equally productive of wealth.* 



* See Book II. chap. III. ' Wealth of Nations.' (Vol. II., page 25, 8vo 

 edition.) The terms productive and unproductive are, in the argument of 

 some of the Economists, and in parts of Dr. Smith's reasonings, so quali- 

 fied, as to render the question a dispute about words, or at most about 

 arrangement. But this is not the case with many branches of both these 

 theories, and especially with the position examined in the text The 

 author actually remarks how much richer England would now be, had she 

 not waged such and such wars. So might we estimate how many more 

 coats we should have, had we always gone naked. The remarks here 

 stated, may with equal justice be applied to a circumstance in the Theory 



