Treatise on the Wealth of Princes and their States and on the simple and natural ways to achieve it

By Mr. C. C. d. P. D. B. German (1)

First Part (2)

All that remains now is to demonstrate the truth and the goodness of my maxims by applying them particularly to all the professions that contribute to the state’s wealth and to all the goods that support and increase it. At the same time, I will observe the good and bad uses that one makes or can make of the goods, with the steps that the prince or the government can and must take on different occasions to prevent certain disturbances that disrupt the proportion that leads to an increase in the state’s wealth.

For this result, the prince must thoroughly know this number, this will, and this power in order to establish and to maintain the proportion that everyone must retain in the acquisition of wealth, so that it is not contrary to the opulence of another and so that everyone gets rich in the same way, that is to say, by enriching the contributors[^1] to his wealth. What happiness for a state when its economy reaches this point of perfection!

I have shown above that the value of all goods only depends on the number, the will, and the power of those who must use them, whom I call contributors[^1] to our wealth. Those (423) who get rich without retaining the proportion that is so essential to real wealth destroy the power, the will, and often even the number of those who should support their so-called wealth, which would not have happened by observing this proportion that would have preserved everything. Therefore, it is true to say that one becomes less rich by these pernicious ways than  by the right and natural way.

This way is: that everyone observes an exact proportion in the acquisition of goods. I will say nothing here of the ways to get rich that are already forbidden by all the laws of the world, which are to take the property of another by open force, theft, larceny, or deceit and fraud, etc., that the prince must try to eliminate from his states by good morals rather than by torture; rather I will only speak of the ways to get rich that are not forbidden by laws and that are often more pernicious to the state than the crimes that are punished by death.

Of the different ways individuals use to get rich and how the prince must unite them into one

One will see by examining my thoughts if they come closer to this general goal of all states than many others, which only lead to the destruction and to a decrease in the number of people, and if, in the way that I claim that the economy of a state is composed, one will arrive sooner or later at what I call public and universal opulence.

 The idea is not to establish an imaginary wealth in a state and to ensure that everyone owns the same amount of goods, and that the peasant and the worker can (406) spend as much as the great nobleman, and that everything is covered and filled with gold and silver, for that would upset the differences in stations and ranks and would be proposing a public opulence that would make everyone poor and miserable. The peasant would no longer want to serve his master if he were as rich as him, and if everyone were the same, everyone would have to be his own servant, cook, and gardener.