III. Before speaking of the steps that a prince must take and maintain in his states to help the natural inclination of all men to multiply and to get rich, I will say that a prince who wants to apply himself to such an advantageous concern must first begin with a general census of all the inhabitants (208) in his states by having carefully recorded the sex, age, and station of each one and then adding the real property, including _les rentes de constitution_[^1] on the state and on personal[^2] property, that each one could own. This will be his main plan on which he can work and which will be useful to him at the end of each year to know by how much his wealth will have increased or decreased, because then he will have lists drawn up not only of those who have died or were born during the year, as one is almost everywhere accustomed to doing, but also of those who have entered or left his states, as much as it is possible to know that. Every five or (209) ten years he could repeat this same census or general list of all the state’s inhabitants to know more clearly if the measures he has taken to increase the population have been carried out and if they have been successful. In addition, it is good for a prince to know all those of his subjects who work, either in part or entirely, for foreigners as well as the foreigners who work for his subjects and are consequently contributors[^3] to the wealth of his states. Because the latter are subjects with whom he must take different measures and who cannot be subject to the general laws of the state, but must be treated in some way like friends and allies.(210)
The steps that a prince takes with this general plan will be all the more appropriate as they will make it easier for him to judge what everyone needs according to his station to get rich and in what manner he could clear the way and remove all obstacles. In this way he will find the proportion that must be maintained in the value of goods that are traded among them. This will be his principal rule in everything that he must undertake. He will see what portion of his subjects must be treated more favorably than another, according to how many[^4] contribute to public wealth and according to the deplorable circumstances to which they may have been reduced by injustice, (211) blindness, and the power of a few. This will lead him to a very necessary reflection for every state in the world: because the common people are usually much more numerous than all the others together and consequently constitute the best part of his state’s wealth and multiply considerably more and increase wealth in proportion, he must take extraordinary care to preserve this noble part and to prevent others from trampling them underfoot and causing their numbers to decrease, which is so harmful to the state because of said number. He will discover the source of the principal revenues of the state and will easily know the origin of their decrease or of their (212) increase. Finally, I find this census of all the people in a State more useful and more necessary than one of the estates and houses whose value and yield absolutely depend on the number of people and on their power and will to use them. The prince must be the master of this, but nevertheless is not, if he does not have perfect knowledge of it. We must consider the prince as a father who, without knowing the number of his children, his valets and maids, or his slaves and their children, would never be able to take appropriate measures for what is needed to preserve, increase, and enrich his family.
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