Of dominion and power
The greatest means to make a city populous and great is to have supreme authority and power; for that draweth dependency with it, and dependency concourse, and concourse greatness. In the cities that have jurisdiction and power over others, as well the public wealth as the wealth of private men is drawn by divers arts and means unto them. Thither do repair the ambassadors of princes, and the agents of dukes and commonwealths, there are the greatest causes heard, as well criminal as civil, and all appeals are brought to trial there. There are the suits and causes, as well of men of quality as of the commonweal and common persons debated and decided, the revenues of the state are there laid up, and there spent out again when there is need. The richest citizens of other countries seek to ally themselves and to get an habitation there.
Out of all which causes here recited there must needs follow an abundance of wealth and riches, a most strong and forcible bait to allure and draw forth the merchants, the artificers and the people of all sorts that live upon their labour and their service, to run amain from the furthest coasts unto it. After this sort a city soon increaseth both in magnificency of building, in multitude of people and abundance of wealth, and also groweth to the proportion of a principality.
The truth whereof these cities all of them declare it plain, that either have had or have any notable jurisdiction in them;Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Lucca, Florence and Brescia, whose countries do extend an hundred miles in length and forty in breadth, and not only contain the most fruitful and fertile plains but also many rich and goodly valleys, many towns and castles that have above a thousand houses in them and do feed very near three hundred and forty thousand persons. Many free and imperial cities in Germany are like to these: Nuremberg, Lubeck and Aachen, and such was Ghent in Flanders, that when the standard was advanced and spread sent out at once an hundred thousand men of war.
I speak not here of Sparta, Carthage, Athens, Rome nor Venice, whose greatness grew as fast as their power, even so far that, to pass the rest, Carthage, in the height of her pride and glory, was twenty-four miles about, and Rome was fifty besides the suburbs, which were in a matter so infinite and great as on the one side they extended even to Ostia and on the other side, in a matter, to Utricoli, and round about they occupied and possessed a mighty deal of the country. But let us proceed, for to this chapter belongeth all that shall be said hereafter of the residence of princes.
