Of all Smith’s theories, or rather opinions—for after all, the question is a mixed one of morals and expediency which cannot be answered by abstract formulas of right or rules of logic—not the least important or characteristic is his doctrine of empire and imperial expenditure. The view now cherished and practised in the great bureaucracies of Europe, and often advanced by socialists under the plausibly scientific phraseology of a theory of consumption, that national profusion is a good thing in itself, was not then propagated or defended by responsible persons. But, though thrift was on their lips, their hands were often in the public purse; and it could not be said that warnings against the outlay of national resources upon useless or mischievous objects were unneeded. Appropriately enough, the very first time, so far as we know, that the _Wealth of Nations_ was cited in Parliament, it was cited as an authority against the policy of accumulating armaments in time of peace. In his speech on the address (November 11, 1783) Fox is reported to have said: “There was a maxim laid down in an excellent book upon the Wealth of Nations, which had been ridiculed for its simplicity, but which was indisputable as to its truth. In that book it was stated that the only way to become rich was to manage matters so as to make one’s income exceed one’s expenses. The proper line of conduct, therefore, was by a well-directed economy to retrench every current expense, and to make as large a saving during the peace as possible.”[31] But Smith took no narrow or penurious view of national economy. He did not prize thrift for its own sake. Such a charge might possibly be brought by an unfriendly critic against Ricardo or Joseph Hume, but assuredly not against Adam Smith. Like Burke and Cobden, he valued frugality in nations as a safeguard against wrong-doing, a prime source of security and independence, and a perpetual check upon the lust of conquest and aggrandisement that so often lurks under the respectable uniform of a missionary civilisation. As he describes the discoveries of the New World and the beginnings of modern empire, a poignant epithet or a burning phrase tells the lesson of many a romantic scramble for the fleece that was so seldom golden, of many a credulous hunt for a fugitive Eldorado.