"So then, as I have said, let the income of the prince be increased by economy, according to the old proverb: 'Thrift is a great revenue.' But if some duties cannot be avoided and the interest of the people demands it, then let the burden fall upon foreign and outlandish wares, which have to do rather with the luxury and refinements of life than with necessity, and which are used by the rich alone, as for example, fine linen, silks, purple, perfumes, unguents, gems, and everything of that sort. For this burden is felt only by those whose fortunes can bear it and who by these payments are not reduced to want, but perchance are rendered more frugal, so that by loss of money, good morals are improved." It would be going too far to say that these economic and financial views of Erasmus are purely original; they are doubtless gathered from his reading of the ancients, especially from Plato and Aristotle; they are, however, addressed with perfect directness to evils of his own time and they show us that his mind was working upon matters of large public import, as well as upon his more purely scholarly interests. It would be impossible for Erasmus to go through any treatise on public affairs without saying something about the wickedness and folly of fighting, and so we find him concluding his _Institutio_ with a chapter on the undertaking of war. It is his familiar argument, but especially follows the point that war should not be undertaken until all other methods of composing differences shall have failed. "If we were of this mind there would hardly ever be a war anywhere." He shows very clearly how seldom the alleged cause of war affects the people of a country. Such causes are usually the private affair of princes. "Because one prince offends another in some trifle, and that a private matter, about relationship by marriage or some such thing, what is this to the people as a whole? The good prince measures all things by the advantage of the people, otherwise he were not even a prince. The law is not the same towards men and towards beasts.... But if some dissensions arise between princes why not rather resort to arbiters? There are so many bishops, so many abbots, scholars, serious magistrates, by whose judgment such a matter might far more decently be composed than by so much murder, pillage, and misfortune throughout the world." Here is international arbitration, pure and simple, a doctrine not appearing in the Utopia, and, so far as I know, not to be found in any modern writer before Erasmus; a dream as yet in his time and long to remain so, but, in the vast ebb and flow of human affairs, coming ever nearer to some definite realisation. Perhaps the most striking argument of Erasmus against war is the utter hopelessness of it as a means of gaining the ultimate good of the state.