150 ADAM SMITH. 



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 in- 

 structs, 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 production, and because employing many servants 

 or many soldiers is expensive, and employing many arti- 

 sans is profitable; for what gives increased value to all 

 capital is productive, and the employing more farm ser- 

 vants or more artisans than we require would be as 

 unprofitable as employing more soldiers or servants. 



These and other propositions connected with this sub- 

 ject, though now generally admitted, were much resisted 

 when I first explained and defended them above forty 

 years ago ; and I shall refer the reader to an Appendix 

 containing the principal parts of the tract then published, 

 because it happened to be the foundation of much that 

 has since been written on this controversy without any 



