re-equilibrates the balance of commerce. Welfare grows in the country with the increasing size of the internal market. The role of ideas is central to this picture: a class of individuals understands the existence of national demand for certain goods and produces it at better conditions than foreign competitors. In the second case, consumption is smaller than production, and the balance of commerce is favorable. As a matter of fact, Verri engages himself in demonstrating that a favorable balance of commerce is possible at certain conditions, that inflation is not a necessary outcome of it, and finally that a growth of the real side of the economy is consistent with it. Inflation takes place only if the extra monetary demand clashes with rigidities on the supply side (in this case, money "stops" in the hands of an unmodified number of sellers). However, this case is not very likely in a "polite" nation. Verri describes here a sort of Hume-Cantillon transmission mechanism without inflation. Additional money, passing from hand to hand, incites industry and puts unemployed factors at work. The Verrian self-sustained mechanism of growth based on increasing income, new needs, and new productions, is the result of this first impulse. Here too, the entrepreneurial spirit plays an essential part. Distribution Like the other parts of his economic contribution, Verri's theory of distribution also springs from the theory of needs and desires. As many of the economists of his time, Verri has a preference for a society in which the weight of the middle class is large. The members of this class, urged by their needs, are stimulated to work hard in order to better their condition. Inequality of fortunes, as far as it is moderate and gradual, is an additional stimulus, giving to everyone a hope to ascend in the social scale. On the contrary, when inequality is too high, society is condemned to poverty and to a stationary state. Rich landlords take no care of their goods, having no anxiety for future welfare. Moreover, the poor are too poor to be influenced by superior need and to hope to better theircondition. As in the savage state, the poor have primary needs, but imagination and desire play no role in their life. Absolute equality of properties is not a better solution. The only effect of the Roman agrarian laws and of similar institutions are that of destroying desire and hindering