By common and public superfluities, I mean everything that protects the state from misfortunes and extraordinary situations. I have proposed in the preceding points ways to protect the state from the usual misfortunes that occur through misunderstanding and fear, or even from the excessive greed of individuals who improperly keep and hoard their superfluous grains and money (387) and cause famine and pernicious costliness. When these two formidable enemies of a state are defeated, those that come from the outside will no longer be so difficult to fight.
The extraordinary situations that sometimes afflict states are plague and war. The plague usually progresses the most through poverty and famine. When the state’s superfluous grains and money are always ready to oppose this scourge, it is certain that its ravages will no longer have such dreadful consequences as in the past. Men support war by means of food and money, so that when the prince, through the establishments that I propose, has facilitated an increase (388) in the number of his people and has turned the superfluities of each individual to the general advantage of society, he will have more than ever the means to oppose a foreign enemy. However, since war is one of the greatest scourges that can afflict a state, it will be more appropriate to look for all conceivable ways to avoid it than to choose this solution, which usually costs the state much more than the profit gotten from it, even if success from it is very favorable. The best ways to avoid war have always been to settle all disputes with one’s neighbors through negotiations, to fortify the borders, to have a corps of good troops who are continually engaged (389) in peacetime in enriching the state by building public amenities, to have even the people bear arms, and to have no lack of food and money. Then, neighbors, far from looking for inopportune quarrels, often content themselves with settling very important disputes through negotiations.
I am not of the opinion that a prince should enclose in his coffers the savings or the surplus of his revenues and leave them idle and useless for a long time in order to wait for an extraordinary need. There are a number of uses that the prince could make of it for the public good, without spending all of it and without putting himself at risk of not regaining it (390) in case of need, whereas such a treasure locked up prevents a large degree of increase in the state’s wealth. Besides, there is no better treasure for a prince than the universal opulence of his people, accompanied by their love and their loyalty. (391)
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