Chapter 1: About the State's Revenues

The state's revenues are a portion that each citizen gives up of his property, in order to have safety for the other, or to profit from it agreeably.

In order to arrange those revenues well, it is necessary to pay attention both to the needs of the state and to the needs of the citizens. It is required not to take from the people's real needs in behalf of the state's imaginary needs.

The imaginary needs are those which the passions and weaknesses of those who govern demand: the charm of an extraordinary project, the sick desire for vain glory, and a certain impotence of mind in the face of fantasies. Often, they who, with a worried mind, were at the head of affairs under the prince, have thought that the state's needs were the needs of their petty souls.

There is nothing which wisdom and prudence must regulate more than that portion which one must take from and that portion which one must leave to subjects.

It is not by that which the people are able to give that it is necessary to measure public revenues, but by that which they ought to give. And if one does measure by what they are able to give, it is necessary that that would at least be by what they are always able to give.

Chapter 2: That It Is Poor Reasoning, to Say That Extensive Taxation Would Be Good in Itself

It has been seen, under certain monarchies, that small countries, exempt from taxation, were as miserable as the places which, all about, were burdened by them. The main reason is that the small encircled state can have neither industry, nor arts, nor manufactures. For in this respect it is hobbled in a thousand ways by the large states within which it is an enclave. The large state which surrounds it has the industry, the manufactures, and the arts. It makes the regulations which procure for it all the advantages. The small state, therefore, becomes necessarily poor, however small the taxes they levy.

Yet it has been concluded, from the poverty of these little countries that, in order that a people be industrious, heavy taxes were required. One would have done better to conclude that none were necessary.