It seems that in a state it is useless to think of universal wealth and that it is impossible for everyone to be rich because the greed of some is sometimes so extraordinary that all the gold and silver of Peru would not make them happy, and the laziness of others is so great that if it rained gold they would not bother to pick it up. Consequently, because the people are a mixture of those who are good and bad with money, it would be ridiculous to want to enrich some despite themselves and to satisfy the insatiable greed of others. But this objection, although very reasonable in itself, does not destroy what I propose to enrich a state and provide it with a rapid increase in the number of its people. (402)
The wealth that I want the prince to procure for his subjects is not the one that each individual imagines for himself because of his blindness and prejudice, which are contrary to his natural feelings and to this order that the Creator has put in human things, but it is the true wealth from which prejudice and blindness make men stray everyday, without them realizing that they are acting against their own interests. The easy enjoyment of true necessities, true conveniences, and true superfluities is what I claim that the prince can procure for everyone by following the simple and natural paths that universal wisdom shows him in the natural order. It would therefore be against my system (403) to say that the prince can equally enrich those good and bad with money and that he can satisfy the greed of the misers and the indolence of the lazy. I maintain, on the contrary, that by removing greed from misers and by adding to the negligence of the lazy, he will make them all happy. This is what the maxims I have just proposed lead to. When no one can become rich except by a fair proportion of what he contributes to the needs of others; when life’s necessary foodstuffs are always equally precious and equally easy to regain; when the effort and the work are well distributed among the contributors[^1] to the state’s wealth; when the lazy are occupied and (404) employed according to the capacity of their minds and their bodies; when misers find that their insatiable greed for accumulating and keeping treasures has become unnecessary and even harmful to their own interests; when everyone is relieved of this fear of the future, and there are solid and unshakeable establishments everywhere so that neither barrenness, nor injustice, nor the greed of the powerful can cause any longer these disastrous accidents that oblige everyone to keep his superfluities, especially that which is in money or in grains; when fathers are no longer hindered in feeding their families or teaching their children a trade, it is natural to believe (405) that from this happy arrangement, everyone will become richer and lack fewer true necessities, conveniences, and superfluities than ever before. Goods, of which there are enough to satisfy everyone and whose lack or shortage only arises from their poor distribution and the poor use that one makes of them, will become more common and more within reach of everyone, so that we can say with confidence that it is not absolutely impossible for a prince, generally speaking, to enrich all his subjects.
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