The National Gain

§ 1 

It is not to be gainsaid that every Nation has gain as the chief object of its Economic and Political statutes, but if we consider the expedients each one has resorted to in order to secure gain, we shall notice incredible discrepancies. 

Each vies with the other to arrive first; but they steer different courses and carry quite different sails, though almost the same wind fills them all. 

They try to get to windward of one another and use special sailors' tricks to run into one another, though there is space and depth enough for them to sail abreast. It seems as if now one of the ships, now the other, was without a Pilot and a Helmsman. 

Nobody can deny that in this way the work follows different rules. Either the Compass is unreliable or the Chart must be wrong. 

A new guide is now put before the eyes of the Reader. It is quite a small one, so that everyone may be able to carry it in his pocket. It is new as well, I said, for it hardly conforms to any other in Europe. And I think it is reliable, too, for I have attempted to found it upon reason and experience. Let us first agree as to the words.