IV. When a Prince (213) knows his family—I mean the quantity and quality of his people—and when he sees that things are not disposed to facilitate their increase in number, but that from the poverty of the common people, they decrease considerably in number everyday, he must make prompt resolutions to stop the harm and then bring things back to their order and natural proportion. In a state where this disorder has reached the point of causing a large decrease in the number of people, it is good to oppose it first with a remedy that ordinary financiers do not like.

III. Before speaking of the steps that a prince must take and maintain in his states to help the natural inclination of all men to multiply and to get rich, I will say that a prince who wants to apply himself to such an advantageous concern must first begin with a general census of all the inhabitants (208) in his states by having carefully recorded the sex, age, and station of each one and then adding the real property, including _les rentes de constitution_[^1] on the state and on personal[^2] property, that each one could own.

In countries where the great and the fake rich lay all the burden of taxes and public obligations on the common people and take from them all means and hope of having merely perfect necessities, far from being able to aspire to conveniences and superfluities, the common people imperceptibly lose the desire to establish themselves, to marry, and to have a family. They go to establish themselves in neighboring countries where they are better treated. Despair obliges another large number to enlist in foreign armies. In a word, the population shrinks.

II.

The second reason they invoke against cutting and clearing the forests is that wood to burn and build with would become too rare. If the wood in the state where it is considered a very precious commodity provided its principal revenue and if it were traded to all the neighboring states in exchange for all the other necessities of life, this reason could have some truth to it. But since this is not the case anywhere, it must never win over the general goal of a state, which is to increase the number of people.

An[^1] increase in the number of people is also an excellent remedy against intemperance and the thoughtless squandering of food necessary for human life. In step with this increase, food becomes more precious and rare, people are more careful not to be lavish with it, and it is better used for its natural purpose, which is preserving our bodies and our health, whereas in the regions where there is not a number (195) of men proportional to regulated consumption, it is either over-consumed to the detriment of their health or it is used in a way for which it was not intended.

It is surprising to hear people who do not explore in greater depth the true interests of a state say that it is better to have few rich subjects than to have many who are poor and that a state must avoid having a greater number of people than its land can feed. Both propositions are equally (191) false: the first is only founded on this common prejudice that wealth is solely in the possession of a certain quantity of goods and not at all in the value that they receive solely from the quantity and the number of those who want to use them.

War also has nearly the same disastrous effects as the plague in a state, as much from the total destruction of some of (188) the people as from their removal and flight to foreign countries. This harm is infinitely more significant than that from the armies ravaging the fields and the towns, often destroying in one day what took several years to establish.

For example, a house’s worth is only in proportion to the number of those who live or want (184) to live in it, the furniture’s, in proportion to the number of those who want to use it, and the field's, vineyard’s, and garden's only insofar as there are many who eat and drink.

I cannot refrain from saying here a word to those who counsel Sovereigns to (180) chase away faithful subjects who have no other failing nor commit no other crime but that of having a different opinion from their Prince on religious matters. I only ask them why they do not advise ways that are natural and faithful to universal law, by removing their error through doctrinal and instructional persuasion. Would it not be more natural if, before going to China or Japan, they worked to convert the Heretics and the Infidels, their brothers and fellow citizens?