Then again, the decline of a State will differ according to whether its
strength is rooted originally in commerce, in arms, or in production;
and if in production, then whether in the production of the artisan or
in that of the peasant. If arms be the basis of the State, then that the
army should become professional and apart is a symptom of decline and a
cause of it; if commerce, the substitution of hazards and imaginaries
for the transport of real goods and the search after real demand; if
production, the discontent or apathy of the producer; as with peasants
an ill system in the taxation of the land or in the things necessary for
its tillage, such as a misgovernment of its irrigation in a dry country;
the permission of private exactions and tolls in a fertile one; the
toleration of thieves and forestallers, and so forth. Artisans, upon the
other hand, may well flourish, though the State be corrupt in such
matters, but they must be secured in a high wage and be given a vast
liberty of protest, for if they sink to be slaves in fact, they will
from the nature of their toil grow both weak and foolish. Yet is not the
State endangered by the artisan's throwing off a refuse of ill-paid and
starving men who are either too many for the work or unskilful at it?
Such an excretion would poison a peasantry, remaining in their body as
it were, but artisans are purged thereby.
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