To better explain my feelings on what I have just said, I will go through the three degrees of perfection that wealth contains. The prince must first and foremost attend to procuring for all his people the easy enjoyment of necessities, that is, everything that (227) everyone needs for preserving and perfecting his body and mind. It is true that the laws of all states provide for this in some way, especially by establishing poorhouses[^1] for the poor and public schools for educating the young. But, as far as poorhouses are concerned, they are the least of what can be established to secure necessities for everyone, in whatever situation they have fallen into, and prevent them from dying of hunger. People do not like to stay in a country because they can find these kinds of refuge in case of necessity, but rather because they are less likely than elsewhere to seek salvation in a poorhouse, since goods are so well (228) distributed that everyone can find their portion in an honest way and protect themselves and their family from becoming residents of the poorhouse. Besides, even in the states with these sorts of institutions, the streets and the main roads are swarming with beggars, and there are people who could still be useful to the state in poorhouses while the true poor look for bread in the streets. Consequently, poorhouses are not a sufficient remedy to compensate for the flaw of poorly distributed necessities in a state.
One will perhaps find it quite extraordinary when I claim that the concern of a prince who wants to get rich must go beyond the said (229) usual institutions, and he must look for more appropriate expedients so that his people easily find necessities, that is, the means to feed and clothe themselves and a place to sleep so that not only their health is not affected in this regard, but their bodies become as perfect and robust as possible. However, a prince has as much an interest as an obligation to make the same effort as a father must to preserve and to educate his children. I demonstrated quite obviously in the previous chapter that our wealth can only begin or increase by the personal service of men, and that wealth is perfect or defective in the proportion that these contributors[^2] to our (230) wealth are perfect or defective in body and mind, and that by examining the desires of and the connection of interests among all men, which the author of nature established, they find they have the physical and moral necessity[^3] to contribute to preserving and perfecting the body and mind of others, and that without this help they cannot become wealthy: all the more reason that a prince and a state that want to enjoy true and solid wealth must begin with this and find out if all the contributors[^4] to its wealth, that is, all the people, enjoy the necessities, and, if everyone does not, conclude that the state’s wealth is still very defective and that it (231) has not yet reached the first degree of its perfection.
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