What were the economic benefits of this expanding transoceanic commercial network to the mother country? The answer to the question is complex, which is why so much ink has been spilt on the matter. As early as the 1770s, the political economist Adam Smith pointed to the colonies as a drain on British resources. He argued that profits arising from them filled the coffers of certain interest groups such as merchants and planters but did not benefit the economy as a whole: this empire was ‘a project which has cost, which continues to cost, and which, if pursued in the same way as it has been hitherto, is likely to cost, immense expence, without being likely to bring any profit; for the effects of the monopoly of the colony trade, it has been shewn, are, to the great body of the people, mere loss instead of profit’ (quoted in Sheridan, 1973: 5–7). Smith's view was that the gains from foreign trade could have been obtained without the costly administrative and defence costs of empire. On the other hand, the eminent conservative political thinker Edmund Burke regarded the preservation of the empire as of paramount economic importance by pointing to the sheer growth in the proportion of British trade that the colonies accounted for.