But here, as elsewhere in his work, the sense of the positive and the concrete, so remarkable in Smith, prevents his being content with a general demonstration. He is not satisfied with proving the inefficiency of intervention as compared with the efficiency of those institutions which are spontaneously created by society itself, but he attempts to show that the State, by its very nature, is unfitted for economic functions. His arguments have been the arsenal from which the opponents of State intervention have been supplied with ammunition ever since. Let us briefly recall them. “No two characters seem more inconsistent than those of trader and sovereign.”[215] Governments are “always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.”[216] The reasons for this are numerous. In the first place, they employ money which has been gained by others, and one is always more prodigal of the wealth of others than of one’s own. Moreover, the Government is too far removed from the centres of particular industries to give them that minute attention which they deserve if they are going to prosper. “The attention of the sovereign can be at best but a very general and vague consideration of what is likely to contribute to the better cultivation of the greater part of his dominions. The attention of the landlord is a particular and minute consideration of what is likely to be the most advantageous application of every inch of ground upon his estate.”[217] This necessity for a thorough cultivation of the soil and for the best employment of capital, for direct and careful superintendence, is an idea to which he continually reverts. He regrets, among other things, that the growth of public debts causes a portion of the land and the national capital to pass into the hands of fund-holders, who are doubtless interested in the good administration of a country, but “are not interested in the good condition of any particular portion of land, or in the good management of any particular portion of capital stock.”[218]