Buch 
An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations / by Adam Smith
Entstehung
Seite
651
JPEG-Download
 

Till'.; w t;altii or nations.

651

after seed-time, and end before harvest, both the husbandmanand his principal labourers can be spared from the farm with-out much loss. He trusts that the work which must be donein 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 fre-quently costs the sovereign or commonwealth as little to main-tain him in the held as to prepare him for it. The citizensof al 1 the different states of ancient Greece seem to have servedin this manner till after the second Persian war; and thepeople of Peloponcsus till after the Peloponesian war. ThePeloponesians, Thucydides observes, generally left the heldin the summer, and returned homo to reap the harvest. TheRoman people under their kings, and during the first ages ofthe republic, served in the same manner, lt was not till thesiege of Veii, that they, who staid at home, began to contri-bute something towards maintaining those who went to war.In the European monarchies, which were founded upon theruins of the Roman empire, both before and for some timeafter the establishment of what is properly called the feudallaw, the great lords, with all their immediate dependents,used to serve the crown at their own expense. In the field,iu the same manner as at home, they maintain themselves bytheir own revenue, and not by any stipend or pay which theyreceived from the king upon that particular occasion.

In a more advanced state of society, two different causescontribute to render it altogether impossible that they, whotake the field, should maintain themselves at their own ex-pense. Those two causes are, the progress of manufactures,and the improvement in the art of war.

Though a husbandman should be employed in an expedi-tion, provided it begins after seed-time and ends before har-vest, the interruption of his business will not always occasionany considerable diminution of his revenue. Without the in-tervention of his labour, nature does herself the greater parto the work which remains to be done. But the moment thatan artificer, a smith, a carpenter, or a weaver, for example,quits Ins workhouse, the sole source of his revenue is com-p etely dried up. Nature does nothing for him, he does alltor himsell. When he takes the field, therefore, in defence°* the public, as he has no revenue to maintain himself, he^ost necessarily be maintained by the public. But in a coun-ry ot which a great part of the inhabitants are artificers and

2 t 2