 The early modern philosophers reflected on the principles of international distributive justice and its implications for global peace. As Istvan Hont highlighted, the rich-country/poor-country question was vigorously debated in the eighteenth century (Hont 2005). Gershom Carmichael and Hutcheson, for example, gave voice to these concerns, but it was Hume and Smith who laid the analytic foundations. A country was wealthier than another not because of specie but because of its people and its accumulated capital in agriculture and manufacturing. Josiah Tucker (1755) gave voice to the potential for unlimited growth, noting that higher wages were correlated with more skilled labor and capital infrastructure. Both Hume and Smith advocated high wages, but feared that with time capital would be shifted to countries with lower wages until those regions were also enriched. Because of increasing demand worldwide, however, there was no reason to suppose that a nation with a healthy export sector would decline. As was widely understood, Holland was testament to the potential of long-lived wealth, having sustained its significant foothold in global trade since it reached its apogee as the most powerful economic nation in the 1620s.