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. Because foreigners are not united under the same law and, consequently, cannot always be retained with the same will, they are only temporary contributors[^3] on whom the state can never (173) count. This truth is so important that I must shed a little more light on it, but not from fear of contradiction: the whole human race feels the same way from the common desire that the Creator has inspired in all men to multiply and from the necessity he established for them to only be able to get rich by multiplying.
I find moreover that almost all the authors who have treated the interests of princes are of the same opinion, and besides that, most laws and institutions that we see in every State in the world only lead to facilitating this increase. I wish rather to show more clearly the synthesis of my principles (174) and how the flaws and the disadvantages that are so harmful to increasing the wealth of princes and their states and that still occur in several places can be avoided and corrected. For I maintain that, with regard to a prince who wants to get rich, all other considerations of no matter what nature must give way to that of increasing the number of his people, and that he must consider the addition of a single subject above all that is called good, and that he must be as intent on preserving a number of citizens as on winning a battle, and that nothing in the world must be so dear to him as to acquire and to merit the name of father of the people, and that consequently, he (175) must regard them as his children, and finally, that, far from doing them real harm, he must watch over the good of each one as well as his own and must seek no other means of enriching himself than in the happiness and in the increase in the number of his people. All his laws and institutions must ultimately lead to this end; the more they facilitate it, the more they are good and perfect. This must be the touchstone for examining them and for knowing their merit. Everything proposed to him under the guise of wealth that is contrary to this growth must be suspect to him and regarded as going against public opulence and as a road to poverty and destitution.
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