Lastly, the State is an inefficient administrator because its agents are negligent and thriftless, not being directly interested in administration, but paid out of public funds. Should the administration of the land pass into the hands of the State he exclaims that not a fourth of the present produce would ever be raised, because of “the negligent, expensive, and oppressive management of his factors and agents.”[219] On the contrary, he proposes that the remainder of the common land should be distributed among individuals. On this point European Governments have followed his advice somewhat too closely.[220] For the same reason—the necessity for stimulating personal interest wherever possible—he commends, instead of a fixed salary for public officers, payment by those who benefit by their services, such payment in every case to be in strict proportion to the zeal and activity displayed. This was to apply, for example, to judges and professors.[221] State administration is accordingly a _pis aller_, and intervention ought to be strictly limited to those cases in which individual action is impossible. Smith recognises three functions only which the State can perform, namely the administration of justice, defence, “and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.”[222] We must beware, however, lest we exaggerate this point. Although Smith, in the majority of cases, preferred individual action, we must not conclude from this that he had unlimited confidence in individuals. Smith’s individualism was of a particular kind. It was not a mere blind preference for every private enterprise, for he knew that industry frequently falls a prey to the spirit of monopoly. “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”[223] In order that a private enterprise may be useful for the community two conditions are necessary. The _entrepreneur_ must be: (1) actuated by personal interest; (2) his actions must by means of competition be kept within the limits of justice. Should either of these two conditions be wanting, the public would run the risk of losing as much by private as they would by State enterprise.