The State's Essential Duties — The Wealth of Nations

Smith opens Book Five by classifying the necessary expenses of the sovereign or commonwealth, the spending side of government before he turns to revenue. He begins with defence. Among hunters every man is warrior and hunter, maintaining himself at no cost to society because there is properly neither sovereign nor commonwealth. Shepherd nations likewise arm every man, though herds must be guarded in war and tribes move with seasons. In those rude states the whole community is the army, and the whole army is the community. There is no separate class paid to fight while others produce food.

As property and settlement grow, the division of labour makes it impossible for cultivators to leave the plough for campaigns. A farmer who abandons harvest weeks cannot return to find his family fed. Militias weaken while specialized arms and discipline give standing forces decisive advantage on the field. Smith does not romanticize ancient citizen armies; he explains why they vanished as commerce thickened. When art and industry occupy the bulk of the population, calling every tradesman from the shop for summer campaigns would ruin manufactures and starve towns.

A well regulated standing army can defend civilized nations and even extend order in barbarous provinces, yet republicans rightly fear it where officer interests diverge from public liberty. The same force that repels invasion can overawe assemblies if generals owe their fortunes to court patronage rather than to law. Smith acknowledges the republican jealousy without dismissing the military facts. Firearms eventually made even militia discipline more lethal, yet long training still favours professionals who drill daily. Militia acts that summon cobblers and weavers for a month cannot match soldiers whose sole profession is war.

He compares ancient Greek and Roman republics, which trusted armed citizens, with modern monarchies that must hire professionals when campaigns would destroy harvests. Britain's extended empire, especially remote American and West Indian colonies, multiplies naval and military charge beyond what any earlier European monarchy bore. Metropolitan taxpayers fund frontiers they rarely see. Garrisons, fleets, and forts stretch across oceans while shopkeepers in London pay excises that finance distant redoubts. The expense of defence rises with civilization because protection becomes specialized, permanent, and geographically vast.

Smith also notes how the progress of firearms altered the balance between militia and regulars without abolishing the need for training. A musket in untrained hands is less decisive than legend suggests; discipline in loading, firing, and maneuver still wins battles. Yet the gap between occasional militia and lifelong soldiers widened as armies grew larger and campaigns longer. Small states surrounded by warlike neighbours may still rely on militia supplemented by subsidy; great commercial empires cannot.

The first duty of the sovereign is therefore expensive in proportion to opulence and extent. Rich nations hire armies poor neighbours cannot afford, then must defend luxuries and trade routes those armies were meant to secure. Colonial defence is a hidden subsidy to settlers until the mother country asks colonists to pay directly, at which point the military budget becomes a political grievance. Smith's defence chapters prepare the reader to see revenue needs not as royal vanity but as structural costs of property, commerce, and empire under division of labour.

He closes Part One by observing that the sovereign who neglects defence invites ruin, yet the sovereign who enjoys unchecked military power may ruin liberty. The constitutional question is how to fund professionals without creating a class whose interest is perpetual war. Standing armies are children of wealth; wealth is vulnerable without them. Book Five will later ask who pays; Part One establishes how large the bill has become before a single tax is named.

Smith reviews Roman and Carthaginian examples to show how republics that once armed citizens eventually hired mercenaries as territory widened. The transformation was not moral decline alone but logistical necessity. Grain fleets and siege trains require specialists. Militia enthusiasm cannot sustain multi-year wars of empire without bankrupting the very farmers whose sons were summoned. Britain's eighteenth-century dilemma mirrors the ancient pattern on a global scale.

He also discusses how firearms changed the relative value of militia training without eliminating the cost advantage of professionals in prolonged campaigns. Town militias may defend bridges for a week; they cannot garrison India. The imperial taxpayer therefore subsidizes a military establishment whose geographic reach exceeds any ancient empire while domestic manufacturers depend on peace at home. Defence expense is the price of commercial society's geographic ambition.

Republican writers who dream of universal citizen service must confront harvest calendars and factory schedules. Smith is sympathetic to liberty and skeptical of fantasy. A nation that abolishes standing forces while surrounded by disciplined neighbours invites conquest; a nation that funds vast armies without tying officers to law invites tyranny. Part One leaves both truths on the table for legislators who must choose institutions, not slogans.

Naval defence receives parallel treatment. Fleets protect trade routes that armies cannot reach, yet seamen and ships cost more per capita than militia ever did. Colonies multiply stations where frigates must cruise year-round. Piracy suppression, convoy duty, and blockade warfare are not optional luxuries for a commercial empire; they are recurring invoices. Smith links maritime expense to the same division of labour that made militia obsolete on land.

He notes that opulent nations bear military charges poor neighbours cannot, which paradoxically makes rich states targets. Wealth invites invasion unless credible force backs property rights abroad as well as at home. Investors in colonial plantations demand protection; creditors of foreign governments demand gunboats. Defence spending thus grows with capital exported, not only with borders threatened. Part One's arc moves from self-armed hunters to taxpayers funding professionals they will never meet on distant frontiers.

Militia training days that pull artisans from benches impose hidden costs beyond pay. Lost production during drills is part of defence finance even when not on the budget. Smith counts those opportunity costs when praising standing armies for leaving cultivators and manufacturers at work. Modern fiscal debates rarely include forgone output of part-time soldiers, yet Smith does.

Small republics surrounded by larger monarchies may still combine militia with subsidies to allies. Switzerland and Dutch precedents appear as exceptions that prove the rule: geography and alliance can substitute for empire-scale armies temporarily, but commercial giants cannot imitate small mountain republics without shrinking trade they exist to protect.

Quartering troops in peacetime and maintaining arsenals between wars are recurring charges even when battles pause. Defence budgets are not only wartime spikes but permanent establishments once professional militaries exist.

Veterans' care and disabled soldiers appear indirectly when Smith discusses how long-service armies bind state to soldiers' livelihood. A professional force creates pension politics before modern welfare vocabulary exists. Defence is therefore a social contract as well as a battlefield technology. Once states hire career soldiers, they owe them livelihood beyond the campaign season.