Imagine a gentleman landowner with an estate worth one hundred thousand écus.[^1] He is known as a rich and (20) comfortably-off man in his province, but it is easy to prove that as soon as this gentleman does not wish to take part in the law established by nature and to conform his will to that of countless others who must cultivate his land and provide his needs, his estate will no longer be worth a cent and he will die of hunger in the middle of his so-called wealth.

There is another kind of law that stands in the way of the will of those who enjoy wealth: it is the will of those who must support[^1] it. It is absolutely impossible for a man to amass wealth and enjoy it without the help of an infinite number of others. Thus, it is clear that if this multitude of persons does not join its will to his, he will never reach his goal.

We can generally say that it is not easy to enjoy goods that do not belong to us, and this does not deserve to be called wealth. (14) The same can be said of ill-gotten goods; we use them as if they belonged to another: either we hide them and deprive ourselves of enjoying them or we use them quickly, fearing that the true owners will want them back and they will be repossessed by the law. It is almost the same thing—as if we had never had them. Children who follow in their father’s footsteps do not become richer, because they do not inherit an easy enjoyment of these goods.

II. Wealth, then, is only the ability to enjoy things easily. This is why I call it an easy enjoyment, this attribute of perfect wealth.[^1] We usually say, ‘That man has the easy life,’ to signal that he is rich, and all those who work to get rich claim that the goal is to have the easy life or to obtain necessary,(12) convenient and superfluous goods easily. They want to enjoy them as they wish, in a way that corresponds to their inclinations, without being bothered or disturbed in their enjoyment.

I. This wealth can be defined as the easy enjoyment of necessary, convenient, and superfluous goods for the support and the pleasures of life.

If it were possible for any one of these great noblemen of ancient Germany or Gaul to come back and, before seeing anyone else, meet--I won’t say a speculator, but simply a Parisian coachman decked out as they usually are-- he would perhaps speak to him and ask for his protection, believing him to be a king or one of the first noblemen of the country, just as today people of modest means from the provinces come for the first time to Paris and mistake the butler or the valet for the master of the house, seeing them all decked out in gold and silver.

I will not say that a person who is rich in this philosophical sense is _not_ above all the possessions that people commonly seek with such ardent desire, and that in the case where by chance he has a fortune, he would not make better use of it than many others who, with the greatest wealth in the world, are very miserable, because they are not blessed with the internal satisfaction and the perfect contentment of the philosopher.

Those who want to treat a subject as important as the one I am going to speak of begin (1) with a clear and precise definition of the thing in question. According to philosophers, true wealth is only in the mind and heart of the person who is content and who only wishes to speculate on divine, sublime, or abstract things.

Chapter 1: Of wealth in general (1)

Chapter 2: Of the wealth of Princes and their States (155)

Chapter 3: Of the wealth of the people, and if it is possible for all the Prince’s subjects to be rich (391)

Chapter 4: Of the different ways individuals use to get rich, and how the Prince must unite them into one (415)
 

I (xvi) would suggest another maxim, which would be never to think of getting rich until the prince and the people have achieved what can be called public opulence. Then, neither they nor their children would ever lack wealth; instead, they would infallibly share in what they have established. They could even be assured of a bonus from the prince, and this benefit would be due to their merit, acquired with justice, and safe from public envy.