The classification was not strict.

His spirited definition of the word "projects" included Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel, as well as Captain Phipps's scheme for raising the wreck of a Spanish ship laden with silver.

He is sometimes credited with remarkable shrewdness in having anticipated in this Essay some of the greatest public improvements of modern times--the protection of seamen, the higher education of women, the establishment of banks and benefit societies, the construction of highways.

But it is not historically accurate to give him the whole credit of these conceptions.

Most of them were floating about at the time, so much so that he had to defend himself against a charge of plagiarism, and few of them have been carried out in accordance with the essential features of his plans.