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. This refuse it is for the
State to decide upon. It may in an artisan State be used for soldiery
(since such States commonly maintain but small armies and are commonly
indifferent to military glory), or it may be set to useful labour, or
again, destroyed; but this last use is repugnant to humanity, and so in
the long run hurtful to the State.

In the decline of a State, of whatever nature that State be, two vices
will immediately appear and grow: these are Avarice and Fear; and men
will more readily accept the imputation of Avarice than of Fear, for
Avarice is the less despicable of the two--yet in fact Fear will be by
far the strongest passion of the time.

Avarice will show itself not indeed in a mere greed of gain (for this is
common to all societies whether flourishing or failing), but rather in a