Of profit
This profit is of such power to unite and tie men fast unto one place, as the other causes aforesaid, without this accompany them withal, are not sufficient to make any city great.
Not authority alone, for if the place whereto men are drawn through the authority of any afford them no commodity, they will not abide nor tarry there.
Neither yet necessity, for such a congregation and collection of people increaseth, multiplieth and lasteth for many years, and necessity is violent, and violence cannot produce any durable effect. So that it comes to pass that not only cities do not increase, but also states and principalities gotten with mere strength and violence cannot be long maintained. They are much like land floods that have no head nor spring, as rivers have that minister perpetually plenty of waters to them, but casually and in a moment rise and swell, and by and by assuage and fall again, so that as they are to travellers fearful in their swellings, so do they fall again within a while, so fast as travellers may soon pass away on foot again dry.
Such were the conquests of the Tartars, that have so oft invaded Asia and put it to the sword, of Alexander the Great, of Attila, of great Tamburlane, of Charles VIII and of Louis the Twelfth king of France. And the reason thereof is that our nature is so great a lover, and longeth after commodity so much, as that it is not possible to quiet and content her with that which is no more but necessary. For as plants although they be set deep enough within the ground, cannot for all that last and be long kept without the favour of the heavens and the benefit of rain, even so the habitations of men, enforced at first by mere necessity, are not maintained long if profit and commodity go not companions with it. Much less then is pleasure and delight of any moment. For man is born to labour, and most men attend their business, and the idler sort are of no account nor reckoning, and their idleness is built and founded upon the labours and the industry of those that work. And pleasure cannot stand without profit and commodity, whereof she is, as it were, the very fruit.
Now suppose that profit is the very thing from whence, as from the principal cause, the greatness of cities groweth (for the same profit is not simple and of one sort but of divers forms and kinds). It resteth therefore now that we see what matter of commodity and profit is most fit for the end whereof we have disputed all this while. We say then that to make a city great and famous, the commodity of the site, the fertility of the soil and easiness of conduct helpeth sufficiently enough.
