V. In order to know and to correct the flaws that may be found in a state in connection to preserving and increasing its wealth and to establish public opulence, which ensures the people’s desire to establish themselves and multiply, and encourages foreigners to remain rather than return to their own country, and makes the state become more powerful and flourishing every day, the prince must have only one and the same view in everything he wants to establish, which is, to make it equally necessary for all individuals to only be able to get rich by contributing in a fair proportion to the needs of others, and for no good that is acquired through the loss and the ruin of another (222) to be considered legitimate, and for all the goods and all the wealth of the State to be regarded as common and belonging to the whole society, notwithstanding the property of each one in particular. The prince must intend to make all his subjects rich and use his authority for this result, which can only be done through this proportion I just spoke of. Without this plan, it is impossible to enrich a state or to establish public opulence because by making the fortune of only one part and ruining another part, the loss of the latter will necessarily lead in time to the loss of the fortunate for the reasons noted above.
For this result, it is good for a prince to imagine (223) the true idea of wealth that I gave in the preceding chapter and to organize everything so that none of his subjects is excluded from it, but he finds a way to satisfy his desire to get rich more than in any other state in the world. If wealth is an easy enjoyment of everything that alleviates life’s needs, it must be equally within reach of all members of the state, and everyone must be able to easily enjoy all goods: Inhabitants must continually exchange what each one grows and makes for life’s needs; people must never find themselves in a situation that resembles a blockaded fortress, (224) a house or town closed up in the time of plague, or those who land by shipwreck on a desert island and die of hunger in the middle of the large quantity of gold and silver that they brought there; estates must be farmed better everyday and agriculture pushed to the highest degree of perfection; discoveries in agriculture must first be made public and come to the knowledge of all the farmers, wine growers, or gardeners; the same must be done for the arts and trades;[^1] commerce, that is, the exchange of the products from the two professions I have just named above, must be favored; all the impediments to transport by land and water must be (225) removed; main roads, canals, and rivers must be well-maintained; those who exchange and transport their own or other’s commodities must not fear either inspections or confiscations; all the products of country people and of those who live in towns must retain a proportional value that facilitates their reciprocal exchange; it must be as easy for peasants to have their needs from artisans as it is for artisans to find theirs among country people; and merchants must do their duty to make this exchange even easier. All of this is more or less what the easy enjoyment of life’s necessities and conveniences consists of in a state, which (226) the prince must try to make perfect and universal in his states. This is what the English praise so much under the name of liberty and property, which, more than any nation in the world, they regard as the principal supports of a state’s well being. In fact, only a true idea of this liberty and property make the difference between real citizens and wretched slaves who are hardly fit to enrich a state.
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