Thus, in the way that I understand it, a prince who gives and preserves a reasonable value to necessary things, especially grains, will at once put farmers at their ease and protect them from the misfortunes that usually happen to them from abundance when town inhabitants, the rich, and misers only seek to crush them by taking advantage of their need to sell their produce for nothing, which at the same time makes it impossible for them to pay the prince’s taxes. The farmers, the rich, and the misers will no longer be able to crush the rest of the people when a food shortage or barrenness (268) comes by obliging them to give all their pennies[^1] for a small quantity of food. Finally, I never tire of saying once again that this will be the most important work that a prince can undertake to enrich his people and increase his revenues. After such a beneficial establishment, the prince will also have the power to find suitable ways to procure for the people a sufficient quantity of the necessary things for preserving and perfecting the body. It is commonly imagined that it is neither the duty nor the concern of the prince to examine whether the people are well or poorly fed. And I maintain, on the contrary, that it is one of the main things that a prince who wants to get rich (269) must pay attention to in order to achieve his goal. If, without the personal assistance of men, nothing can acquire the name of goods or wealth, it makes sense to say that as much as the body and the strength of the one who is to lend this assistance are perfect is as many degrees of perfection in the goods and wealth that the said personal assistance produces.[^2] An individual who uses horses or cattle for his work makes sure they are well fed in order to receive help that is proportional to their strength. Why do we not want to do the same justice to men, the only authors and guardians of everything that is called goods or wealth? And why do we think it does not matter for the prince and the state if in general (270) all his people are well or poorly fed and clothed?
I showed in the first chapter that by a universal law established in the natural order, all men, as long as there are any in the world, owe each other the necessities, that is to say, to contribute proportionally to preserving and perfecting each other’s bodies; and this law makes known at the same time their true interests and the principal way of getting rich as well as the impossibility of doing it otherwise. By this incontestable principle and by a special convention among the people who make up a State, everyone has an equal obligation and the same interest to contribute his portion to preserving and perfecting (271) the bodies of all the contributors[^3] to public wealth. All the more reason that the prince, into whose hands each individual has relinquished his rights, must push against and remove all the obstacles that prevent the proportional distribution of life’s necessary things and do as much as possible so that not one of his subjects is deprived of them and everyone enjoys enough of them. As much as the prince pushes this fortunate situation to its highest level of perfection will be as many degrees added to the wealth of the state.[^4] This is where he must begin to reform the abuses that can be found in his states in relation to public opulence. By rooting out intemperance, depreciation, (272) and the excessive costliness of foodstuffs, he will have found the principal remedy against the crucial enemy to his states’ wealth. But there are still other precautions to take to ensure that everyone has his necessities, as I will show later.
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