Ways and Means

disappointed, he loses the money he has spent. Therefore people nowadays are very chary of taking such a risk.

However, I think I can meet this difficulty too, and suggest a plan that will make the opening of new cuttings a perfectly safe undertaking. The Athenians, of course, are divided into ten tribes. Now assume that the state were to offer each tribe an equal number of slaves, and that when new cuttings were made, the tribes were to pool their luck.

The result would be that if one tribe found silver, the discovery would be profitable to all; and if two, three, four, or half the tribes found, the profits from these works would obviously be greater.

Nothing that has happened in the past makes it probable that all would fail to find.

Of course, private individuals also are able to combine on this principle and pool their fortunes in order to diminish the risk. Nevertheless there is no reason to fear that a public company formed on this plan will conflict with the interests of private persons, or be hampered by them. No, just as every new adhesion to a confederacy brings an increase of strength to all its members, so the greater the number of persons operating in the mines, the more treasure they will discover and unearth.

I have now explained what regulations I think should be introduced into the state in order that every Athenian may receive sufficient maintenance at the public expense.

Some may imagine that enough money would never be subscribed to provide the huge amount of capital necessary, according to their calculations, to finance all these schemes. But even so they need not despair.

For it is not essential that the plan should be carried out in all its details in order that any advantage may come of it. No, whatever the number of houses built, or of ships constructed, or of slaves purchased, they will immediately prove a paying concern.

In fact in one respect it will be even more profitable to proceed gradually than to do everything at once. For if everybody begins building, we shall pay more for worse work than if we carry out the undertaking gradually; and if we try to find an enormous number of slaves, we shall be forced to buy inferior men at a high price.

By proceeding as our means allow, we can repeat whatever is well conceived and avoid the repetition of mistakes.

Besides, were the whole scheme put in hand at once, we should have to find the whole of the money; but if some parts were proceeded with and others postponed, the income realised would help to provide the amount still required.

Possibly the gravest fear in everyone’s mind is that the works may become overcrowded if the state acquires too many slaves. But we can rid ourselves of that fear by not putting more men in year by year than the works themselves require.

Accordingly I hold that this, which is the easiest way, is also the best way of doing these things. On the other hand, if you think that the burdens imposed during the late war[*](The allusion is to the War of the Allies who had revolted from Athens. It lasted from 357 to 355 B.C. See Introduction.) make it impossible for you to contribute anything at all—well, keep down the cost of administration during the next year to the amount that the taxes yielded before the peace; and invest the balances over and above that amount, which you will get with peace, with considerate treatment of resident aliens and merchants, with the growth of imports and exports due to concentration of a larger population, and with the expansion of harbour and market dues, so that the investment will bring in the largest revenue.[*](i.e., invest the balances in the mines, and use the revenue obtained to carry out my scheme.)