However much most theologians oppose it— We deny it, but the denial is only words. Statesmen must turn a blind eye. Some eminent theologians nevertheless approve it: Calvin, Bucer, Zanchi, and Peter Martyr, since it is permitted by so many great jurists, imperial decrees, princely statutes, the customs of commonwealths, and the approval of churches, and so on. I will therefore allow it.

But I will not permit private individuals to lend simply because they choose to. Permission shall be given only to orphans, unmarried women, widows, or those whose age, sex, education, or ignorance of trade leaves them no other way to employ their money. Even those approved shall not lend separately: they shall bring their money to a common bank authorised in every city, as at Genoa, Geneva, Nuremberg, and Venice, at five, six, or seven per cent, and never above eight, as the supervisors or treasury officials consider appropriate.

Just as not everyone who wishes shall be allowed to lend at interest, neither shall everyone be allowed to borrow at interest. Permission shall go to merchants, young tradesmen, and those in need or able to employ the money honestly, rather than to prodigals and spendthrifts. The supervisors shall examine and approve their need, purpose, and circumstances.

I will have no private monopolies that enrich one person and impoverish many, no accumulation of offices, and no discharge of their duties through deputies. Weights and measures shall be uniform everywhere, determined by the motion of the outermost celestial sphere and the sun: sixty miles to a degree, according to observation; a thousand geometrical paces to a mile; five feet to a pace; twelve inches to a foot; and so on. Once measures are established, it is easy to standardise weights, calculate everything, and determine the dimensions of solid bodies through algebra and solid geometry.

I detest wars unless they serve the people’s safety and arise from urgent necessity. We hate the hawk because it always lives at war. I will permit no offensive war unless its cause is entirely just.

For I greatly admire what Hannibal says to Scipio in Livy: it would have been a blessing for both you and us if God had inclined our predecessors to be content, you with Italy and we with Africa. Neither Sicily nor Sardinia is worth such expense and suffering, so many fleets and armies, or the lives of so many famous commanders.

Everything must first be tried: peaceful means shall be tried first. Calm authority achieves what violence cannot. I will have them proceed with the utmost moderation. But listen: Fabius shall be my general, not Minutius, for a man who relies on judgement harms the enemy more than one who relies on strength without using his reason;

and in such wars they shall refrain as far as possible from laying waste to inhabited lands, burning towns, massacring infants, and the like. For defensive wars, I will have forces on land and sea always ready at short notice: a fleet prepared, soldiers equipped for action, and that iron rod which Bonfini wishes for among his Hungarians; money too, the sinew of war, shall always be ready;

and sufficient revenue shall be reserved for the commonwealth—a third part, as in ancient Rome and Egypt—to avoid heavy taxes and levies. It shall cover the cost of war and every other public disbursement: expenses, fees, pensions, repairs, innocent sports, feasts, gifts, rewards, and hospitality.

Above all, I will have matters of this kind carried out with due consideration and great deliberation, so that nothing is done rashly, nothing slackly or timidly. But where am I being carried, a stranger here? To pursue the rest would take a whole volume. Take your hand from the picture: I have dwelt too long on this subject. I would gladly have wandered further here, but the narrow limits within which I am confined will not allow it.

From commonwealths and cities I will come down to households, which have as many corrosive troubles and vexations, and discontents as frequent, as the rest. A political body and a household body are closely akin: they differ only in size and the scale of their affairs, as Scaliger writes. Just as both apparently have the same lifespan—six or seven hundred years, according to Bodin and Peucer, drawing on Plato—so they often suffer distress and ruin from the same causes;

extravagance, for example, ruins both alike: extravagance in building, lavish expenditure, clothing, and so on. Whatever form it takes, it produces the same effects. One of our writers on regional geography, speaking in passing of old families and asking why they are so numerous and long-lasting in the north, yet so few and so quickly extinguished in the south, gives only this explanation: luxury has squandered everything; extravagance has consumed it all.

Fine clothes and elaborate buildings came to this island, as he observes in his Annals, not many years ago, at no small cost to hospitality: hospitality declined. Yet that word is often misunderstood. Extravagance and waste shelter under the names of generosity and hospitality; what is commendable in itself when properly practised has long been misconceived, and through its abuse has become the bane and complete ruin of many noble families.

Some men live like the rich glutton, consuming themselves and their wealth in ceaseless feasting and invitations. Like Axylus in Homer, they keep open house for all comers and entertain everyone who visits. Maintaining a table beyond their means and a retinue of idle servants, though this is less common than formerly, they are suddenly ruined: their relations, friends, and numerous dependants devour them, as Actaeon was devoured by his hounds.

Paolo Giovio tells an astonishing story about our northern countries: the immense amount of food consumed at our tables. I can truly say that, as it is so often abused, this is neither generosity nor hospitality, but excessive luxury, gluttony, and waste: sheer vice. It brings debt, want, beggary, and hereditary diseases, consumes people’s fortunes, and destroys the healthy balance of their bodies.

To this I might add their excessive spending on buildings—those fanciful houses, turrets, walks, and parks—on gambling, extravagant pleasures, and that prodigious luxury in clothing. In the end they are forced to dissolve their households and creep into holes.

Seyssel, in his account of the commonwealth of France, gives three reasons why the French nobility so often went bankrupt. First, they pursued so many lawsuits and disputes, one after another, that the length and expense commonly enabled lawyers to buy them out of their estates.

The second cause was extravagance: they lived beyond their means and were therefore swallowed up by merchants. La Noue, a French writer, gives five reasons for his countrymen’s poverty, much to the same effect. He believes that if the French gentry were divided into ten parts, eight would be found to have seriously diminished their estates through sales, mortgages, and debts, or to have lost them entirely.

The last was excessive spending on clothes, which consumed their revenues. You may judge how this bears on our own present condition. But more of that elsewhere. In a person’s body, if the head, heart, stomach, liver, spleen, or any other part is diseased, all the rest suffer with it. So it is with this household body.

If its head is worthless—a spendthrift, drunkard, womaniser, or gambler—how can the household live at ease? Even Safety herself, if she wished to save this household, could not possibly do so, as Demea says in the comedy: Safety herself cannot save it.

A good, honest, hardworking man often has a shrew for his wife: a sickly, unchaste, lazy, foolish, careless partner, a proud, ill-tempered hussy, a lustful, extravagant woman; and through her everything goes to ruin;

or if their natures differ—he is thrifty, she spends everything; he is wise, she is stupid and weak-minded—what harmony can there be, what friendship? Like the thrush and swallow in Aesop, instead of mutual love and affectionate names, there are cries of “whore” and “thief”; they throw stools at each other’s heads. What madness torments this household?

Forced marriages commonly produce such results. Or, if all is well between the couple and they live together in loving harmony, they may have disobedient and unruly children whose bad behaviour torments them: their son is a thief or spendthrift, their daughter a whore; a stepmother or daughter-in-law throws everything into disorder;