Therefore a new commercial policy would not suffice. New principles of foreign and colonial policy must be introduced, and we must sweep away for ever the cobweb occasions and pretexts that had drawn us into so many futile conflicts. But he was equally anxious to promote economy in time of peace. He was alarmed at the progress of the enormous debts “which at present oppress and will in the long-run probably ruin all the great nations of Europe.” He saw that when war has once been begun, no limit can be set to expenditure. But some limit, he thought, could and should be set to debt; and therefore he pleaded for a policy of strict economy in time of peace, and pleaded so effectively that it was adopted by Pitt in the breathing-space between the American and the French wars. But for that policy, which reduced armaments to a point considered by some dangerously low, Great Britain could hardly have stood the stress and strain of her long-drawn conflict with Napoleon. To thriftlessness in time of peace Smith attributes some of the peculiar evils that attend modern warfare. His remarks sound strangely familiar in our ears, as though they had been written by a philosopher of yesterday about the events of the day before:— “The ordinary expense of the greater part of modern governments in time of peace being equal or nearly equal to their ordinary revenue, when war comes they are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expense. They are unwilling, for fear of offending the people, who by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable, from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted. The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion.... In great empires, the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war, but enjoy at their ease the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory.” Indeed, he adds, the return of peace seldom relieves a nation from the greater part of the taxes imposed during the war. They are still required to pay the interest on the newly created debt.