“Since the object of tradesmen leads especially to making money, covetousness is awakened in the hearts of the citizens through the pursuit of trade. The result is everything in the city will be offered for sale: confidence will be destroyed and the way opened to all kinds of trickery: each one will work only for his own profit, despising the public good; the cultivation of virtue will fail, since honor, virtue’s reward, will be bestowed on anybody.” St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Thomas Aquinas in De Regimine Principuum as cited in St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, trans. and ed. by Paul E. Sigmund (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988) II.3.