An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

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nations of this kind, have frequently done so. In every nation,

the men of the military age are supposed to amount to about a

fourth or a fifth part of the whole body of the people. If the

campaign, too, should begin after seedtime, and end before

harvest, both the husbandman and his principal labourers can be

spared from the farm without much loss. He trusts that the work

which must be done in the mean time, can be well enough executed

by the old men, the women, and the children. He is not unwilling,

therefore, to serve without pay during a short campaign ; and it

frequently costs the sovereign or commonwealth as little to

maintain him in the field as to prepare him for it. The citizens

of all the different states of ancient Greece seem to have served

in this manner till after the second Persian war; and the people

of Peloponnesus till after the Peloponnesian war. The

Peloponnesians, Thucydides observes, generally left the field in

the summer, and returned home to reap the harvest. The Roman

people, under their kings, and during the first ages of the

republic, served in the same manner. It was not till the seige of

Veii, that they who staid at home began to contribute something

towards maintaining those who went to war. In the European

monarchies, which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman

empire, both before, and for some time after, the establishment

of what is properly called the feudal law, the great lords, with

all their immediate dependents, used to serve the crown at their

own expense. In the field, in the same manner as at home, they

maintained themselves by their own revenue, and not by any

stipend or pay which they received from the king upon that

particular occasion.

 

In a more advanced state of society, two different causes

contribute to render it altogether impossible that they who take

the field should maintain themselves at their own expense. Those

two causes are, the progress of manufactures, and the improvement

in the art of war.

 

Though a husbandman should be employed in an expedition, provided

it begins after seedtime, and ends before harvest, the

interruption of his business will not always occasion any

considerable diminution of his revenue. Without the intervention

of his labour, Nature does herself the greater part of the work

which remains to be done. But the moment that an artificer, a

smith, a carpenter, or a weaver, for example, quits his

workhouse, the sole source of his revenue is completely dried up.

Nature does nothing for him ; he does all for himself. When he

takes the field, therefore, in defence of the public, as he has

no revenue to maintain himself, he must necessarily be maintained

by the public. But in a country, of which a great part of the

inhabitants are artificers and manufacturers, a great part of the

people who go to war must be drawn from those classes, and must,

therefore, be maintained by the public as long as they are

employed in its service,

 

When the art of war, too, has gradually grown up to be a very

intricate and complicated science; when the event of war ceases

to be determined, as in the first ages of society, by a single

irregular skirmish or battle ; but when the contest is generally

spun out through several different campaigns, each of which lasts

during the greater part of the year; it becomes universally

necessary that the public should maintain those who serve the

public in war, at least while they are employed in that service.

Whatever, in time of peace, might be the ordinary occupation of

those who go to war, so very tedious and expensive a service

would otherwise be by far too heavy a burden upon them. After the

second Persian war, accordingly, the armies of Athens seem to

have been generally composed of mercenary troops, consisting,

indeed, partly of citizens, but partly, too, of foreigners; and

all of them equally hired and paid at the expense of the state.

From the time of the siege of Veii, the armies of Rome received

pay for their service during the time which they remained in the

field. Under the feudal governments, the military service, both

of the great lords, and of their immediate dependents, was, after

a certain period, universally exchanged for a payment in money,

which was employed to maintain those who served in their stead.

 

The number of those who can go to war, in proportion to the whole

number of the people, is necessarily much smaller in a civilized

than in a rude state of society. In a civilized society, as the

soldiers are maintained altogether by the labour of those who are

not soldiers, the number of the former can never exceed what the

latter can maintain, over and above maintaining, in a manner

suitable to their respective stations, both themselves and the

other officers of government and law, whom they are obliged to

maintain. In the little agrarian states of ancient Greece, a

fourth or a fifth part of the whole body of the people considered

the themselves as soldiers, and would sometimes, it is said, take

the field. Among the civilized nations of modern Europe, it is

commonly computed, that not more than the one hundredth part of

the inhabitants of any country can be employed as soldiers,

without ruin to the country which pays the expense of their

service.

 

The expense of preparing the army for the field seems not to have

become considerable in any nation, till long after that of

maintaining it in the field had devolved entirely upon the

sovereign or commonwealth. In all the different republics of

ancient Greece, to learn his military exercises, was a necessary

part of education imposed by the state upon every free citizen.

In every city there seems to have been a public field, in which,

under the protection of the public magistrate, the young people

were taught their different exercises by different masters. In

this very simple institution consisted the whole expense which

any Grecian state seems ever to have been at, in preparing its

citizens for war. In ancient Rome, the exercises of the Campus

Martius answered the same purpose with those of the Gymnasium in

ancient Greece. Under the feudal governments, the many public

ordinances, that the citizens of every district should practise

archery, as well as several other military exercises, were

intended for promoting the same purpose, but do not seem to have

promoted it so well. Either from want of interest in the officers

entrusted with the execution of those ordinances, or from some

other cause, they appear to have been universally neglected; and

in the progress of all those governments, military exercises seem

to have gone gradually into disuse among the great body of the

people.

 

In the republics of ancient Greece and Rome, during the whole

period of their existence, and under the feudal govermnents, for

a considerable time after their first establishment, the trade of

a soldier was not a separate, distinct trade, which constituted

the sole or principal occupation of a particular class of

citizens; every subject of the state, whatever might be the

ordinary trade or occupation by which he gained his livelihood,

considered himself, upon all ordinary occasions, as fit likewise

to exercise the trade of a soldier, and, upon many extraordinary

occasions, as bound to exercise it.

 

The art of war, however, as it is certainly the noblest of all

arts, so, in the progress of improvement, it necessarily becomes

one of the most complicated among them. The state of the

mechanical, as well as some other arts, with which it is

necessarily connected, determines the degree of perfection to

which it is capable of being carried at any particular time. But

in order to carry it to this degree of perfection, it is

necessary that it should become the sole or principal occupation

of a particular class of citizens; and the division of labour is

as necessary for the improvement of this, as of every other art.

Into other arts, the division of labour is naturally introduced

by the prudence of individuals, who find that they promote their

private interest better by confining themselves to a particular

trade, than by exercising a great number. But it is the wisdom of

the state only, which can render the trade of a soldier a

particular trade, separate and distinct from all others. A

private citizen, who, in time of profound peace, and without any

particular encouragement from the public, should spend the

greater part of his time in military exercises, might, no doubt,

both improve himself very much in them, and amuse himself very

well; but he certainly would not promote his own interest. It is

the wisdom of the state only, which can render it for his

interest to give up the greater part of his time to this peculiar

occupation ; and states have not always had this wisdom, even

when their circumstances had become such, that the preservation

of their existence required that they should have it.

 

A shepherd has a great deal of leisure; a husbmdman, in the rude

state of husbandry, has some; an artificer or manufacturer has

none at all. The first may, without any loss, employ a great deal

of his time in martial exercises ; the second may employ some

part of it ; but the last cannot employ a single hour in them

without some loss, and his attention to his own interest

naturally leads him to neglect them altogether. Those

improvements in husbandry, too, which the progress of arts and

manufactures necessarily introduces, leave the husbandman as

little leisure as the artificer. Military exercises come to be as

much neglected by the inhabitants of the country as by those of

the town, and the great body of the people becomes altogether

unwarlike. That wealth, at the same time, which always follows

the improvements of agriculture and manufactures, and which, in

reality, is no more than the accumulated produce of those

improvements, provokes the invasion of all their neighbours. An

industrious, and, upon that account, a wealthy nation, is of all

nations the most likely to be attacked ; and unless the state

takes some new measure for the public defence, the natural habits

of the people render them altogether incapable of defending

themselves.

 

In these circumstances, there seem to be but two methods by which

the state can make any tolerable provision for the public

defence.

 

It may either, first, by means of a very rigorous police, and in

spite of the whole bent of the interest, genius, and inclinations

of the people, enforce the practice of military exercises, and

oblige either all the citizens of the military age, or a certain

number of them, to join in some measure the trade of a soldier to

whatever other trade or profession they may happen to carry on.

 

Or, secondly, by maintaining and employing a certain number of

citizens in the constant practice of military exercises, it may

render the trade of a soldier a particular trade, separate and

distinct from all others.

 

If the state has recourse to the first of those two expedients,

its military force is said to consist in a militia; if to the

second, it is said to consist in a standing army. The practice of

military exercises is the sole or principal occupation of the

soldiers of a standing army, and the maintenance or pay which the

state affords them is the principal and ordinary fund of their

subsistence. The practice of military exercises is only the

occasional occupation of the soldiers of a militia, and they

derive the principal and ordinary fund of their subsistence from

some other occupation. In a militia, the character of the

labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates