considerable diminution of his revenue. Without
the intervention of his labour, Nature
does herself the greater part of the work which
remains to be done. But the moment that an
artificer, a smith, a carpenter, or a weaver,
for example, quits his workhouse, the sole
source of his revenue is completely dried up.
Nature does nothing for him; he does all for
himself. When he takes the field, therefore,
in defence of the public, as he has no revenue
to maintain himself, he must necessarily be
maintained by the public. But in a country,
of which a great part of the inhabitants are
artificers and manufacturers, a great part
the people who go to war must be drawn from
those classes, and must, therefore, be maintained
by the public as long as they are employed
in its service.
When the art of war, too, has gradually
grown up to be a very intricate and complicated
science; when the event of war ceases
to be determined, as in the first ages of society,
by a single irregular skirmish or battle;
but when the contest is generally spun out
through several different campaigns, each of
which lasts during the greater part of the
year; it becomes universally necessary that
the public should maintain those who serve
the public in war, at least while they are employed
in that service. Whatever, in time of
peace, might be the ordinary occupation of
those who go to war, so very tedious and expensive
a service would otherwise be by far
too heavy a burden upon them. After the second
Persian war, accordingly, the armies of
Athens seem to have been generally composed
of mercenary troops, consisting, indeed, partly
of citizens, but partly, too, of foreigners;
and all of them equally hired and paid at the
expense of the state. From the time of the
siege of Veii, the armies of Rome received
pay for their service during the time which
they remained in the field. Under the feudal
governments, the military service, both of the
great lords, and of their immediate dependents,
was, after a certain period, universally
exchanged for a payment in money, which
was employed to maintain those who served
in their stead.
The number of those who can go to war,
in proportion to the whole number of the
people, is necessarily much smaller in a civilized
than in a rude state of society. In
a civilized society, as the soldiers are maintained
altogether by the labour of those
who are not soldiers, the number of the former
can never exceed what the latter can
maintain, over and above maintaining, in a
manner suitable to their respective stations,
both themselves and the other officers of government
and law, whom they are obliged to
maintain. In the little agrarian states of ancient
Greece, a fourth or a fifth part of the
whole body of the people considered themselves
as soldiers, and would sometimes, it is
said, take the field. Among the civilized nations
of modern Europe, it is commonly computed,
that not more than the one hundredth
part of the inhabitants of any country can be
employed as soldiers, without ruin to the
country which pays the expense of their service.
The expense of preparing the army for the
field seems not to have become considerable
in any nation, till long after that of maintaining
it in the field had devolved entirely upon
the sovereign or commonwealth. In all the
different republics of ancient Greece, to learn
his military exercises, was a necessary part of
education imposed by the state upon every
free citizen. In every city there seems to
have been a public field, in which, under the
protection of the public magistrate, the young
people were taught their different exercises
by different masters. In this very simple institution
consisted the whole expense which
any Grecian state seems ever to have been at,
in preparing its citizens for war. In ancient
Rome, the exercises of the Campus Martius
answered the same purpose with those of the
Gymnasium in ancient Greece. Under the
feudal governments, the many public ordinances,
that the citizens of every district should
practise archery, as well as several other military
exercises, were intended for promoting
the same purpose, but do not seem to have
promoted it so well. Either from want of
interest in the officers entrusted with the execution
of those ordinances, or from some other
cause, they appear to have been universally
neglected; and in the progress of all those
governments, military exercises seem to have
gone gradually into disuse among the great
body of the people.
In the republic of ancient Greece and
Rome, during the whole period of their existence,
and under the feudal governments, for
a considerable time after their first establishment,
the trade of a soldier was not a separate,
distinct trade, which constituted the sole
or principal occupation of a particular class of
citizens; every subject of the state, whatever
might be the ordinary trade or occupation by
which he gained his livelihood, considered
himself, upon all ordinary occasions, as fit
likewise to exercise the trade of a soldier, and,
upon many extraordinary occasions, as bound
to exercise it.
The art of war, however, as it is certainly
the noblest of all arts, so, in the progress of
improvement, it necessarily becomes one of
most complicated among them. The state
of the mechanical, as well as some other arts,
with which it is necessarily connected, determines
the degree of perfection to which it is
capable of being carried at any particular
time. But in order to carry it to this degree
of perfection, it is necessary that it should become
the sole or principal occupation of a
particular class of citizens; and the division