To return to the spirit of conquest. A great many things, as we have shown in another place, are not appropriable. Foreign territories are not so for entire nations. A military chief with his staff may be better off through the conquest of a country, but a nation never. When William of Normandy seized England he committed an act that was not according to his interest as properly understood. He destroyed by war a considerable quantity of wealth, and he and his barons in turn suffered by the general diminution of welfare. These sufferings were, however, infinitesimal and very hard to appreciate. True views of the nature of wealth were, moreover, not accessible to the brains of men of the eleventh century. Certainly, when William and his army had possessed themselves of England they experienced an increase of wealth that was very evident to them. The king had more revenue; every Norman soldier got land or a reward in money, and he became richer after Hastings than he had ever been before. But what did the Roman _people_, for example, gain by the conquest of the basin of the Mediterranean? Four or five hundred grand personages divided the provincial lands alienated by the state among themselves, but what benefit did the masses derive from the bloody campaigns of the republic? The distribution of the _annone_, 280 grammes of bread each a day, given to 200,000 persons out of the 1,500,000 inhabitants of the Eternal City! Surely the Romans would have gained a great deal more by working themselves than by pillaging other nations!