If it the custom to draw gold and silver from abroad by exporting merchandises and produce of the state, such as corn, wine, wool, etc. this will not fail to enrich the state at the cost of a decrease of the population; but if gold and silver be attracted from abroad in exchange for the labour of the people, such as manufactures and articles which contain little of the produce of the soil, this will enrich the state in a useful and essential manner. In a great state, indeed, the 25 persons in a hundred of whom we have spoken, cannot be employed to make articles for foreign consumption. A million men will make more cloth, for example, then will be consumed annually in all the mercantile world, because the greater number of people in every country, and there will seldom be found in any state 100,000 persons employed upon clothing for foreigners. This is shown in the supplement with regard to England, which of all the nations of Europe supplies most cloth to foreigners.
In order that the consumption of the manufactures of a state should become considerable in foreign parts, these manufactures must be made good and valuable by a large consumption in the interior of the state. It is needful to discourage all foreign manufactures and to give plenty of employment to the inhabitants.
If enough employment cannot be found to occupy the 25 persons in a hundred upon work useful and profitable to the state, I see no objection to encouraging employment which serves only for ornament or amusement. The state is not considered less rich for a thousand toys which serve to trick out the ladies or even men, or are used in games and diversions, than it is for useful and serviceable objects. Diogenes, at the siege of Corinth, is said to have fell a rolling his tub that he might not seem idle while all others were at work; and we have today societies of men and women occupied in work and exercise as useless to the state as that of Diogenes. How little soever the labour of a man supplies ornament or even amusement in a state it is worth while to encourage it unless the man can find a way to employ himself usefully.
It is always the inspiration of the proprietors of land which encourages or discourages the different occupations of the people and the different kinds of labour which they invent.
The example of the prince, followed by his court, is generally capable of determining the inspiration and tastes of the other proprietors of land, and the example of these last naturally influences all the lower ranks. A prince, then, without doubt is able by his own example and without any constraint to give such a turn as he likes to the labour of his subjects.
If each proprietor in a state had only a little piece of land, like that which is usually leased to a single farmer, there would be hardly any cities. The people would be more numerous and the state very rich if every proprietor employed on some useful work the inhabitants supported on his land.
But when the nobles have great landed possessions, they of necessity bring about luxury and idleness. Whether an Abbot at the head of a hundred monks live on the produce of several fine estates, or a nobleman with 50 domestic servants, and horses kept only for his service, live on these estates, would be indifferent to the state if it could remain in constant peace.
But a nobleman with his retinue and his horses is useful to the state in time of war; he can always be useful in the magistracy and the keeping of order in the state in peace time; and in every case he is a great ornament to the country, while the monks are, as people say, neither useful nor ornamental in peace or war on this side of heaven.
The convents of Mendicant Friars are much more pernicious to a state than those of the closed orders. These last usually do no more harm than to occupy estates which might serve to supply the state with officers and magistrates, while the Mendicants who are themselves without useful employment, often interrupt and hinder the labour of other people. They take from poor people in charities the subsistence which ought to fortify them for their labour. They cause them to lose much time in useless conversation, not to speak of those who intrigue themselves into families and those who intrigue themselves in families and those who are vicious. Experience shows that the countries which have embraced Protestantism and have neither monks nor mendicants have become visibly more powerful. They have also the advantage of having suppressed a great number of holy days when no work is done in Roman Catholic countries, and which diminish the labour of the people by about an eighth part of the year.
If it were desired to make use of everything in a state it might be possible, it seems, to diminish the number of mendicants by incorporating them into the monasteries as vacancies or deaths occur there, without forbidding these retreats to those who can give no evidence of their skill in speculative sciences, who are capable of advancing the practical arts, i.e. in some section of mathematics. The celibacy of churchmen is not so disadvantageous as is popularly supposed, as is shown in the preceding chapter, but their idleness is very injurious.
