Caput quartum: De uectigalibus et exactionibus.
The Prince's Duty to Restrain Exactions
A Christian prince should avoid provoking the people through excessive taxation, finding contentment in a clear conscience and the promise of divine reward rather than in personal enrichment.
Anyone who looks into the chronicles of the ancients will find that most uprisings have sprung from excessive exactions. So a good prince must take care that the common people's spirits are provoked as little as possible by these matters. Let him command freely, if he can.1 The office of a prince is too exalted for it to be fitting that he serve for hire. And a good prince holds whatever his loving citizens possess. There were several pagans who, from the deeds they had carried out well for the republic, brought nothing into their own homes except glory. There was one, and then another, who scorned even this — men like Fabius Maximus and Antoninus Pius. How much more, then, should a Christian prince be content with a clear conscience — especially since he serves one who rewards every righteous deed, without fail, with the richest rewards?2
The Flatterers Who Devise New Exactions
Courtiers who invent pretexts to squeeze the people dry betray the very name of prince, and any ruler who listens to them falls far short of true princely office.
There are certain people who do nothing else at the courts of princes than devise one new pretext after another so that the people are squeezed dry as much as possible — and then they believe they are looking after the interests of their rulers quite well, as if they were the enemies of their own fellow citizens. And yet let the prince who gladly listens to such men know this: he falls very far short of living up to the name of a prince.
The True Way to Increase Revenue
Rather than burdening the people, a prince should cut unnecessary expenses, avoid wars, and restrain greedy officials; greed-driven exactions have no limit and ultimately destroy even the greatest empires.
This is what you should focus on instead, and this is where you need to find ways to ensure that as little as possible is demanded from the people. The most effective way to increase revenue is for the prince to cut away unnecessary expenses, to eliminate idle offices, to avoid wars and the foreign travels most like them, to restrain the rapacity of officials, and to devote more energy to governing his domain well than to expanding it.3 But if exactions are driven by greed or ambition, where will it all end? What limit or stopping point can there be to the demanding? Since desire is boundless, always pressing forward and stretching further what it has begun, until — as the old proverb says — a rope stretched too far snaps, and the people's patience, finally exhausted, breaks out into revolt. This is what once brought down even the most prosperous empires.4
Justice and Mercy in Taxation
When taxes are necessary, a good ruler must spare the poor and weigh in his own conscience the inhumanity of funding royal extravagance through the suffering of thousands.
But if necessity demands that something be levied from the people, then it is the mark of a good ruler to do it in such a way that as little hardship as possible falls on the poor. For it may well be in the ruler's interest to call the wealthy toward thrift. But to drive the poor to hunger and the noose — that is utterly inhuman, and it's far from safe.5 And let a devout king weigh this again and again in his own mind: while he's busy expanding his retinue, while he wants to marry off his niece or sister in grand style, while he's making all his children equal to himself in rank, while he's enriching his nobles, while he's traveling abroad to show off his wealth to foreign peoples — how inhuman it is that because of all this, thousands of people at home, along with their wives and children, are starved to death, buried in debt, and driven to utter despair.67 I wouldn't even count such men among human beings, let alone among princes — those who extort from the destitute what they then squander shamefully on prostitutes or gambling.89 And we hear that there are people of this kind who even consider it their right to do this.
The Entrenchment of Unjust Revenues and the Need for Equity
Once introduced, unjust revenues can never be removed, so a good prince must set a wholesome example, prevent wealth from concentrating in few hands, and heed Plato's counsel against extremes of riches and poverty.
And yet he should also weigh this in his own mind: whatever revenue has been introduced, on however slight a pretext, that seems to serve the profit of the prince or his nobles — once in, it can never be taken away. When the pressure to collect is removed, the burden on the people must not only be lifted but, as far as possible, repaired, and the losses of past years restored. So anyone who truly wishes his people well will beware of setting a ruinous example. But if he takes pleasure in the suffering of his own, or simply looks the other way, he is anything but a prince, no matter what title he goes by. In the meantime, care must be taken that wealth does not become too unevenly distributed — not that I would wish anyone stripped of his property by force, but because means must be found so that the resources of the many are not funneled into the hands of a few. For Plato wanted his citizens to be neither too rich nor too poor — because the poor have nothing to offer, and the rich, by their own skill, refuse to offer what they could.
Why Exactions Do Not Even Enrich the Prince
Princes are not truly enriched by heavy exactions, since most of the revenue is siphoned off by intermediaries, and ancestors who received less were in fact more prosperous.
What about the fact that princes aren't even enriched by exactions of this kind? If anyone wants to understand this, let him consider how much less their ancestors received from their own people, and how much more generous they were, and how much more they abounded in every way — because a good portion of these things slipped away between the fingers of those demanding and those receiving, and the smallest portion returns to the prince himself.
Taxing Necessities versus Luxuries
Essential goods like grain, bread, and cloth should be taxed as little as possible, yet they are now burdened by exactions, customs duties, and monopolies that fleece the poor for the ruler's meager profit.
So the use of these things is shared even by the lowest common people; a good ruler will burden them as little as possible—things like grain, bread, beer, wine, cloth, and other such goods without which human life can't be carried on. And yet these very things are now being burdened, especially, and in more than one way: first, by the heaviest exactions that tax collectors extort—the common people call them 'taxes'—then by customs duties, which also have their own collectors, and finally by monopolies, from which the poor are fleeced so that a little profit might find its way back to the ruler.10
Taxing Luxuries and Upholding Honest Coinage
If taxes must be levied, they should fall on luxury goods like silk and spices, and a good prince must maintain honest coinage, avoiding the four common methods of robbing the people through debasement, clipping, and manipulation of valuation.
So, as has been said, the best way to increase the prince's revenue is to cut expenses — and here too, as the proverb goes, frugality is a great source of income. But if it can't be avoided that some tax must be levied, and the situation of the people demands it, let the burden fall on foreign and exotic goods that serve luxury and indulgence rather than genuine necessity, and whose use is particular to the wealthy — things like fine linen and silk. Purple dye, pepper, spices, perfumes, gemstones, and anything else of that kind. The only ones who'll feel the disadvantage from this are those whose wealth can bear the loss, and they won't be reduced to poverty because of it. They may in fact become more frugal — so that the loss of money is made up for by the gain in better character. In minting coinage, a good prince will maintain the standard of trustworthiness that he owes both to God and to his people — and he won't permit himself what he punishes in others with the harshest penalties. In this matter there are roughly four ways by which the people are commonly robbed — something we ourselves witnessed for some time after the death of Charles, when a prolonged anarchy, more destructive than any tyranny, was devastating your realm. First, when the metal of the coin is debased by some adulteration of its alloy; then, when weight is shaved from it; further, when it's clipped around the edges; and finally, through the management of its official valuation — now raised, now lowered — however it has seemed advantageous to the prince's treasury.
Read the original Latin
Si quis excutiat Veterum Annales, reperiet plerasque seditiones ex immodicis exactionibus ortas fuisse. Proinde curandum erit bono Principi, ut quam minimum irritentur hisce rebus animi plebis. Gratuito si potest imperet. Sublimius est Principis officium, quam ut mercenarium esse deceat. Et bonus Princeps habet, quidquid ciues possident amantes. Fuere complures Ethnici, qui ex rebus bene pro Republica gestis, nihil in aedes suas intulerunt, praeter gloriam. Fuit unus et alter, qui hanc quoque contemserint, ueluti Fabius Maximus, et Antoninus Pius. Quanto magis oportet Christianum Principem, conscientia recti contentum esse, praesertim cum ei militet qui nullum recte factum non amplissimis praemiis repensat?
Sunt quidam qui nihil aliud agant apud Principes, quam ut nouis subinde titulis repertis quamplurimum emungatur a populo, ac tum se Principum rebus probe consulere credunt, perinde quasi hostes sint suorum ciuium. Atqui hos qui libenter audit, is sciat se a Principis uocabulo plurimum abesse.
Hoc potius studendum, et in hoc excogitandae rationes, ut quam potest minimum exigatur a populo. Commodissima fuerit augendi uectigalis ratio, si Princeps sumtus superuacaneos amputarit, si ministeria otiosa reiecerit, si bella et his simillimas peregrinationes uitauerit, si officiorum rapacitatem cohibuerit, et si magis studeat recte administrandae ditioni suae, quam propagandae. Alioqui si exactiones auaritia metietur aut ambitione, quis tandem futurus est exigendi uel modus uel finis? Quandoquidem infinita est cupiditas, et semper urget et intendit quod coepit, donec, iuxta prouerbium uetus, nimium tensus rumpatur funiculus, et in seditionem demum erumpat uicta populi patientia, quae res florentissimis quondam imperiis exitium attulit.
Quod si necessitas flagitat, exigi nonnihil a populo, tum boni Principis est, id his rationibus facere, ut quam minimum incommodorum perueniat ad tenues. Nam diuites ad frugalitatem uocare fortassis expedit. At pauperes ad famem et laqueum adigi, tum inhumanissimum est, tum parum tutum. Illud etiam atque etiam secum cogitet pius Rex, dum studet augere suum satellitium, dum neptem aut sororem splendide uult elocare, dum liberos omnes sibi pares reddere, dum proceres suos locupletare, dum peregrinando opes suas gentibus ostentare, quam inhumanum est, ob haec tot hominum millia domi cum uxoribus et liberis fame necari, inuolui aere alieno, ad rerum omnium desperationem adigi. Nec enim istos uel inter homines recensuerim, nedum inter Principes, qui e pauperculis extorquent, quod turpiter perdant scortis aut alea. Et huiusmodi quosdam audimus esse, qui hoc quoque ius suum esse putent.
Quin et illud secum expendat, quidquid semel inductum fuerit per occasionem temporum, quod ad Principis aut Procerum lucrum attinere uideatur, id numquam potest aboleri: cura sublata exigendi necessitate, non modo tollendum esset onus populi, uerum etiam sarciendum ac reponendum, quoad fieri possit, superiorum temporum dispendium. Proinde qui bene uult populo suo, cauebit exemplum pestilens inducere. Quod si gaudet calamitate suorum, aut eam negligit, nihil minus est quam Princeps, quocumque uocetur nomine. Curandum interim, ne nimia sit opum inaequalitas, non quod quemquam per uim bonis exui uelim, sed quod iis rationibus utendum, ne multitudinis opes ad paucos quosdam conferantur. Nam Plato ciues suos neque nimium diuites esse uult, neque rursus admodum pauperes, quod pauper prodesse non possit, diues arte sua prodesse nolit.
Quid quod ne locupletantur quidem aliquoties exactionibus huiusmodi Principes. Id qui cupit cognoscere, recenseat quanto minus proaui receperint a suis, et quanto beneficentiores fuerint, quantoque magis rebus omnibus abundarint, quod bona pars horum inter digitos exigentium et recipientium dilabatur, et minima pars ad ipsum redeat Principem.
Quarum igitur rerum usus infimae quoque plebi communis est, has quam minimum grauabit bonus Princeps, ueluti frumenti, panis, ceruisiae, uini, pannorum ac caeterarum item rerum, sine quibus humana uita non potest transigi. Atqui haec nunc potissimum onerantur, idque non uno modo, primum grauissimis exactionibus quas redemptores extorquent, uulgus asisias uocat, deinde portoriis, quae et ipsa suos habent redemptores, postremo monopoliis, ex quibus ut paululum compendii redeat ad Principem, dispendio mulctantur tenues.
Igitur optime quidem, ut dictum est, augetur Principes census, contractis impendiis, et hic quoque, iuxta prouerbium, magnum uectigal parsimonia est: tamen si uitari non potest, quin exigatur aliquid, et ita res populi flagitat, onerentur Barbarae ac peregrinae merces, quae non tam ad uitae faciunt necessitatem, quam ad luxum ac delicias, et quarum usus diuitum est peculiaris, ueluti byssus, serica. , purpura, piper, aromata, unguenta, gemmae, et si quid est aliud huius generis. Nam hinc incommodum sentient ii tantum, quorum fortunae ferre possint, nec ob hanc iacturam ad inopiam redigentur, sed fortasse reddentur frugaliores, ut pecuniae iactura, morum bono sarciatur. In cudenda moneta bonus Princeps praestabit eam fidem, quam et Deo debet et populo, neque sibi permittet, quod atrocissimis suppliciis punit in aliis. Hac in re quatuor ferme modis expilari populus solet, id quod nos aliquamdiu uidimus a morte Caroli, cum diutina Anarchia quauis tyrannide perniciosior ditionem tuam affligeret. Primum ubi nomismatis materia mixtura quapiam uitiatur, deinde cum ponderi detrahitur, praeterea cum circumcisione minuitur, postremo cura aestimatio nunc intenditur, nunc remittitur, utcumque uisum est Principis fisco conducere.
Notes
- 1 ↩Gratuito carries the sense of 'without payment' or 'freely/gratuitously' — the prince should not use his authority to extract money from his subjects.
- 2 ↩conscientia recti: literally 'conscience of what is right' — rendered as 'a clear conscience' to convey the sense of a conscience satisfied with rectitude.
- 3 ↩Rapacitatem rendered as 'rapacity' to preserve the force of official greed/extortion, not mere ambition.
- 4 ↩The proverb 'nimium tensus rumpatur funiculus' (a rope stretched too far breaks) is rendered with its natural English equivalent while preserving the classical allusion.
- 5 ↩Laqueum rendered 'noose' to capture the suicidal despair Erasmus implies; could also mean 'snare' in a broader sense.
- 6 ↩Satellitium rendered 'retainue' in the sense of a royal bodyguard or court entourage, not a modern satellite.
- 7 ↩Elocare rendered 'marry off' — the Latin specifically means to give a woman in marriage with a dowry.
- 8 ↩Pauperculis rendered 'the destitute' to convey the diminutive's force — those who are especially vulnerable and poor.
- 9 ↩Alea rendered 'gambling' — the Latin refers to dice games, a common metaphor for reckless waste.
- 10 ↩asisias is a Greek loanword rendered simply as 'taxes' to keep the sense clear for a modern reader.
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