A depopulated state (176) and a poor and destitute state are the same thing. The sad effects that several states have experienced make well known the importance of this truth. I will cite three examples everyone knows. By expulsing the Moors, Spain lost a part of its wealth, which we must estimate to be as much as and more than the acquisition of Peru, regardless of what we could say about the justice of either affair.

It (172) is true that states seek to compensate for the lack of people by attracting foreigners to their interests and by establishing them as contributors[^1] to the state’s wealth through trade. This increase often leads to considerable growth in this wealth, as we’ll see later, but this is not a solid, stable, and perfect good like an increase in the number of people and citizens who alone are the true contributors[^2] to the state’s wealth.

I. For a state to be rich, the definition (168) of wealth that I gave in the first chapter must be applicable to it, and the prince and the people must easily enjoy necessary, convenient, and superfluous goods. Since this wealth and this temporal happiness are the common object of the desires and wishes of all men together, they are also the object for those who make up the state, from the Prince to the least of the poor, for the same reason.

His ministers, if they are good people, work attentively to eliminate the obstacles that prevent public opulence as soon as they know about them, because it is very often the lack of awareness and attention rather than of good will on their part when the fortune of the state loses ground rather than advances. I may be told that they know of them,[^1] but that it is morally (164) impossible to push things to this degree of perfection that I am proposing and that, we can describe the idea of a rich state all we want, there is no way to reach it in spite of all the attention we give.

All the beauty of natural bodies is in the proportion of all the members, their harmony and regular movements; the soul that vivifies them makes its beauty known through these charming exteriors. But also, on the contrary, irregular movements disfigure and corrupt the most beautiful bodies; disastrous accidents that happen to the principal parts of a body often destroy all its beauty; wounds and illnesses make the whole machine suffer. Gangrene, for example, that begins in the least of its parts gradually takes over neighboring parts until it is totally destroyed.

This is why, without paying attention to this particular kind of finance whose mysteries I am willing to ignore, my only subject in this and in the following chapters will be the finances and the general economy of princes and their states taken together as a whole; and I will try to give the principles and the general rules for everything that can arise that is of most importance on this subject, in every state in the world, while nevertheless mainly looking at[^1] Germany, my country, for the good of which I must care the most.

Chapter II
Of the Wealth of Princes and their States

To remedy a flaw so essential and so prejudicial to the wealth and to the temporal happiness (151) of men, they invented societies, which, from a single family, have grown into republics as we see them today. The only goal of these great societies at their birth and in their original purpose was their common wealth. They tried to find a solution for the disadvantages that come from the contrary wills of separate individuals; they tried to reunite them into only one by coming together to form a society that would have as a goal their common and reciprocal happiness.

VII. Having given in the preceding points a general idea of true wealth, of what preserves and increases it, and of what destroys and decreases it, I believe to have shown at the same time the source and the principal rules of the true economy or of the way to acquire, to preserve, and to increase goods.

We must not imagine that it is with impunity that we transgress the law and the natural order in the handling of superfluities and that the harm we do by this to others does not even fall on its author, because the principle established at the beginning of this chapter is this: it is indisputable that to contribute to a decrease the wealth of others is to impoverish oneself. (145) We sense the truth of this through an infinite number of events that we see everyday.