IV. When a Prince (213) knows his family—I mean the quantity and quality of his people—and when he sees that things are not disposed to facilitate their increase in number, but that from the poverty of the common people, they decrease considerably in number everyday, he must make prompt resolutions to stop the harm and then bring things back to their order and natural proportion. In a state where this disorder has reached the point of causing a large decrease in the number of people, it is good to oppose it first with a remedy that ordinary financiers do not like. Because their wisdom is limited, they believe it is only useful for the prince and the state to find cash immediately. (214) This remedy is to invite foreigners to establish themselves in the country and in the towns by granting them considerable privileges whose advantages do not tend to harm and to discourage others. There are states that use this remedy to increase the population without having a pressing need that requires it, and there is no doubt that when it succeeds, it produces a good result because of the principle I have just established—that an increase in the population is always an increase in the wealth of a state. Consequently, the previous inhabitants become richer by attaining a number of new people. I will only say that sometimes this remedy encounters difficulties because the public invitations (215) are often the reason that neighboring states, which are equally attentive to preserving and increasing the number of their people, take contrary measures. The ordinary ways, although very simple and very natural, that one must follow in a state to make everyone want to establish themselves there are those that show everyone the shortest and easiest road to becoming wealthy and that make them come without proposing extraordinary advantages that are subject to the jealousy of neighboring states. Besides, a well-governed state will not fail to visibly increase its wealth as soon as it does not make the people lose hope of living well there with a family as large (216) as it can be. And although this increase is not as noticeable as one from a sudden increase in the number of foreigners who establish themselves all at once in a state, nevertheless it will not fail to make its effects felt in a short time.
So that the arrangements a Prince would like to make for this result fulfill everyone’s desire to get rich and to be happy, they must strongly unite the will of each individual in such a way that neither his passions nor his prejudices can ever prevail over what the natural order shows us with regard to acquiring, preserving, and increasing our wealth. The more the wills of every individual who (217) makes up the State are uniform, the more they will produce public opulence, and consequently, the more they will contribute to increasing the population. The less that a few can oppose the happiness and the wealth of others, the less the state will be subject to ruin and poverty. The most worthy work of a prince is to establish this harmony and this proportion that make so many different interests, which often seem opposed, unite and have in effect only one and the same interest, one and the same way of being happy and rich, one and the same will, and to ensure that individuals who want to seek another path to wealth than that of contributing proportionally to the needs of others always find themselves blocked and (218) stopped in their tracks. The more he perfects this, that is, achieves the simplicity that the natural order shows us, the more the state becomes rich and happy.
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