two; nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the records of human stupidity as that excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of cities.  As if the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws and repress crimes!  As if bees and wasps could live honestly in flocks—­ men, only in separate dens!  As if it were easy to help one another on the opposite sides of a mountain, and impossible on the opposite sides of a street!  But when the men are true and good, and stand shoulder to shoulder, the strength of any nation is in its quantity of life, not in its land nor gold.  The more good men a state has, in proportion to its territory, the stronger the state.  And as it has been the madness of economists to seek for gold instead of life, so it has been the madness of kings to seek for land instead of life.  They want the town on the other side of the river, and seek it at the spear point; it never enters their stupid heads that to double the honest souls in the town on this side of the river would make them stronger kings; and that this doubling might be done by the ploughshare instead of the spear, and through happiness instead of misery.

Therefore, in brief, this is the only object of all true policy and true economy:  “utmost multitude of good men on every given space of ground”—­ imperatively always good, sound, honest men,—­not a mob of white-faced thieves.  So that, on the one hand all aristocracy is wrong which is inconsistent with numbers; and on the other all numbers are wrong which are inconsistent with breeding.

122.  Then, touching the accumulation of wealth for the maintenance of such men, observe, that you must never use the terms “money” and “wealth” as synonymous.  Wealth consists of the good, and therefore useful, things in the possession of the nation; money is only the written or coined sign of the relative quantities of wealth in each person’s possession.  All money is a divisible title-deed, of immense importance as an expression of right to property, but absolutely valueless as property itself.  Thus, supposing a nation isolated from all others, the money in its possession is, at its maximum value, worth all the property of the nation, and no more, because no more can be got for it.  And the money of all nations is worth, at its maximum, the property of all nations, and no more, for no more can be got for it.  Thus, every article of property produced increases, by its value, the value of all the money in the world, and every article of property destroyed, diminishes the value of all the money in the world.  If ten men are cast away on a rock, with a thousand pounds in their pockets, and there is on the rock, neither food nor shelter, their money is worth simply nothing, for nothing is to be had for it.  If they built ten huts, and recover a cask of biscuit from the wreck, then their thousand pounds, at its maximum value, is worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit.  If they make their thousand pounds into two thousand