Deus … voluit mutua egestate et copia humanas foveri amicitias. … Neque vero censeri debet in usus paucorum reperta negotiatio, sed ut quod alteri deest alterius copia pensaretur.
[God] wished human friendships to be engendered by mutual needs and resources. …
It ought not to be supposed that trade was invented for the benefit of a few, but in order that the lack of one would be counterbalanced by the oversupply of another.
Hugo Grotius od Huigh de Groot – Dutch philosopher and jurist (1583-1645), from “The Freedom of the Sea Or, The Right Which Belongs to the Dutch to Take Part in the East Indian Trade”, chapter I and chapter XII (“Mare Liberum”, 1609)