ChapterTwoBookOne62

We often search too late and almost always uselessly for solutions to these very terrible and very pernicious problems for a state, and it is necessary for nature itself and the universal providence of the Creator to come to the rescue and to remedy an ill that men caused by their own mistake. The arrival of an abundant harvest first opens the most hidden and best guarded granaries; all those who carefully saved their grain from fear or greed put it up for sale and want to get rid of it all at once, but they usually pay a high price for their stupidity. A large number (245) of those who could consume these goods of the earth are already unable to buy them at any price; others find a way to wait for the harvest; others have left the country or are dead from poverty and starvation. This is why their so-called wealth, which they wanted to found on the ruin of those who must support it, is suddenly destroyed and is nothing but dust. Because, by their own error, they destroyed the power and the will of the contributors[^1] to their wealth and put themselves in the situation of not being able to find someone to buy and to consume their grain. So they must sell it at a loss or use it as fodder for cattle: often (246) it all spoils.

This depreciation of grains causes a new disorder, equally harmful to the proportional distribution and the good use of necessities in a state, and at the least hint of barrenness, the same disruption of the state’s general economy, of which I have just spoken, comes back like a machine that turns around on the stage. It is thus infinitely advantageous for the state’s wealth for the prince to apply himself to preventing the two extremes from ever happening—namely the depreciation of things that are necessary for life, especially grains, and their extreme costliness, which commonly causes famine and destitution—and to banishing these very pernicious cycles (247) from his country[^2], that is to say, life’s necessities should always be evenly valued[^3] and never impossible to get for anyone in his states. A prince who succeeds in executing such a glorious plan and brings things to this point could flatter himself to have found the true philosopher’s stone and an unquenchable source of wealth, because this will help more than anything else in the world to preserve and to increase the number of people.