ChapterTwoBookOne53

II. Having sufficiently demonstrated and established as the base of my system that the wealth of a prince and a state is only strictly in the number (201) of its people, and that by increasing their numbers, the state becomes wealthy, and that in the proportion that this number decreases, the state and consequently the prince become poorer, and that the only goal of a prince who wants to get rich is this increase in the number of people, towards which all his attention and his care must be directed, it is now appropriate to present in detail the means which are commonly used to reach this end in order to know which are the most simple and the most natural, that is, the best, and which prevent the success of a plan for becoming rich and happy that is so common and so natural to princes, states, and generally to all men. All individuals who make up (202) a state have this plan; they only direct all their attention and only wish for this. And, as I have said many times, to want to be rich is to want to have a large number of other people who work towards and contribute to satisfying this desire. Consequently, if there were ten times as many men on earth, they would still want even more of them.

However, far from following the natural order to satisfy these desires and everyone taking the same road by contributing in a fair proportion to the needs of others just like they want others to contribute to theirs, by which means they could reach wealth and general opulence and push it to (203) a sublime degree of perfection (because this would help to increase the number of people in an extraordinary way, and no one would be poor and destitute), they often do the exact opposite. Opposing their will to the will of others who are blinded by their passions and prejudices, they work day and night to ruin the others, and the repercussions, from the natural tendency of things, rebound onto them and quickly put them at the same disadvantage into which they have placed the others. This is one of the greatest obstacles that prevent an increase in the wealth or in the number of people in a state. We see the truth of this right before our eyes in examples from several states. (204)