212 ADAM SMITH. 



not scrupled to rank the capital sunk in the public debt, or 

 spent in warfare, in the same class with the property con- 

 sumed 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 entered into, for some purpose 

 either of security or aggrandizement; and that stock thus 

 employed must have produced an equivalent, which cannot 

 be asserted of property or population absolutely destroyed. 

 This equivalent may have been greater or less ; that is, the 

 money spent for useful 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 fund- 

 ing 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 in- 

 curred 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 necessity of war 

 by a prudent system of foreign policy. And he who holds 

 the labour of soldiers and sailors and diplomatic 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 employments of stock, are parts 

 of the system, and all are equally productive of wealth.* 



* See Book II. chap. III. l 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 qualified, 

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

 ment. But this is not the case with many branches of both those 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 of the Balance of 



