6. Two Final Conclusions or Conditions

152. What follows concerns business exchange, where the exchanger intends to trade with the thing he acquires, because he bought it not to use it but to sell it, and this at a dearer price; and this business exchange is called pecuniary or lucrative.

153. On this question I add, beyond the rules above set down, two things as to what is just [nn.154-156] and what unjust [n.157]: the first is that such exchange is useful for the republic; the second is that such an exchanger, in proportion to his diligence and prudence and risks in exchanging, may receive a corresponding reward.

154. The exposition of the first condition is that it is useful for the republic to have those who keep things for sale, so that these things can be readily found by the needy wanting to buy them. At a level beyond too, it is useful for the republic to have those who import necessary things that the country does not abound in, and yet the use of them is useful there and necessary. From this it follows that the merchant, who imports a thing from the country where it abounds to another country where it is deficient, or who keeps the thing he has bought so that it may be readily found for sale by him who wants to buy it, is performing an act useful for the republic. This as to the exposition of the first condition.

155. The second condition follows, that everyone who serves the republic in an honest work should live from his labor (‘honest’, I said, because of prostitutes and others who live dishonestly); but he who imports things or keeps them is honestly and usefully serving the republic; therefore, it is necessary for him to live from his labor. - And not this only, but everyone can justly sell his industry and care. He who transports things from country to country needs considerable industry in order to consider what things a country abounds in and needs; therefore, he can, beyond necessary sustenance for himself and his family, justly receive for this deputed necessity a wage corresponding to his industry. And beyond this, third, he can justly receive something corresponding to his perils; for from the fact that he transports things at his peril, if he is a transporter, or guards at his peril, if he is a guarder, he can, because of this sort of danger, unconcernedly receive something corresponding, and especially if sometimes, without his fault, he suffers loss in such service of the community (for example: a merchant when transporting sometimes loses a ship weighed down with the greatest goods; and another merchant, from a chance fire, loses the most precious things he is guarding for the republic).

156. In confirmation of all this is that a merchant can, if a legislator from the republic is not present, take for himself, without extortion, as much as a just and good legislator ought to repay a minister of the republic. But if there were a good legislator in a poor country, he ought to hire for a considerable wage such sort of merchants, so that they may import necessary things and conserve them after they have been imported; and not only should he find necessary sustenance for them and their family, but also compensate their industry, peril, and skill. Therefore, they can do this themselves as well when selling.

157. From these two conditions, required in just business, it is plain how some are blamable in doing business, as namely those who neither transport nor conserve nor improve things for sale by their industry. Nor is any other simple person made certain of the value of the thing to be sold. But he [the blamable business dealer] only buys so as at once to sell without any of these required conditions. He would need to be exterminated or banished from the republic. And he is called in Gallic a ‘regratier’ (‘regrater’ or ‘huckster’), because he prevents direct exchange between those willing to buy or exchange in economic manner, and consequently he makes anything that is sellable or useful more expensive for the buyer and cheaper for the seller than it should be, and thus he inflicts a loss on both sides.