advises that certain advantages be granted to shipowners so as to induce them to increase their shipping.466 But the purpose is not to limit the advantage to Athenian merchantmen, nor to restrict import trade. It is rather the opposite. He would enrich the city by tribute on both imports and exports, imposed for sumptuary and revenue purposes,467 and would also develop a public merchant-marine for rent to merchants, as a further source of income.468
POPULATION
In antithesis to Plato and Aristotle, the problem of population has no difficulties for Xenophon. He does not deem it advisable to set a limit on the population of the state. On the contrary, he conceives it as one of the advantages of his plan in the Revenues, that thereby the city would become very populous, and thus land about the mines would soon be as valuable as that in the city itself.469
DISTRIBUTION
Xenophon is far less concerned about the problem of distribution than Plato. He has no suggestions as to wages, profits, or prices, no ideal state where an equitable distribution shall be realized, no yearnings after equality, or complaints against the evils of extreme wealth or poverty. Like Plato, he would avoid civic discord in the state,470 but by the increase of production and exchange rather than by their limitation. In Socrates’ parable of the dog and the sheep, he presents a suggestion of a theory of profits, but his plea is for the employer instead of the laborer. The right of the former to share in the profits of the business is based on his service as overseer of the work, and as protector of the workmen.471
Our author does not definitely reveal his attitude toward the poorer masses, but it seems probable that he had little interest in them, except in so far as their condition might affect the fortunes of the state. He was, of