of porcelain; another undertakes the opera; another the "Ecclesiastical Gazette;" another a tragedy in familiar life, or a novel or romance in the English style. This maintains the stationer, the inkmaker, the bookseller, the hawker, who might else be reduced to beggary. There is nothing, then, but the restitution of the hundred and twenty livres to those who have nothing that makes the state flourish.
The Man of Forty Crowns.—A pretty way of flourishing, truly!
The Geometrician.—And yet there is no other. In every country it is the rich that enable the poor to live. This is the soul source of the industry of commerce. The more industrious a nation itself is, the more it gains from foreign countries. Could we, on our foreign trade, get ten millions a year by the balance in our favor, there would, in twenty years, be two hundred millions more in the nation. This would afford ten livres a head more, on the supposition of an equitable distribution. That is to say, that the dealers would make each poor person earn ten livres the more, once paid, in the hopes of making still more considerable gains. But commerce, like the fertility of the earth, has its bounds, otherwise its progression would be ad infinitum. Nor, besides, is it clear that the balance of our trade is constantly favorable to us. There are times in which we lose.
The Man of Forty Crowns.—I have heard much talk of population. If our inhabitants were
