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Yet ought not he who renders and exhibits his country obsequious to potent princes to contribute to the oppressing of it, nor having tied its legs to subject also its neck, as some do who, referring all things both great and little to these potentates, upbraid it with servitude, or rather wholly take away the commonwealth, rendering it astonished, timorous, and without command of any thing. For as those who are accustomed neither to sup nor bathe without the physician do not make so much use of their health as Nature affords them; so they who introduce the prince’s judgment into every decree, council, favor, and administration, necessitate the princes to be more masters of them than they desire. Now the cause of this is principally the avarice and ambition of the chief citizens. For either, by injuring their inferiors, they compel them to fly out of the city; or in such things wherein they differ from one another, disdaining to be worsted by their fellow-citizens, they bring in such as are more powerful, whence both the council, people, courts of judicature, and whole magistracy lose their authority. But he ought to appease private citizens by equality, and mightier men by mutual submissions, so as to keep peace within the commonweal, and coolly to determine their affairs; making for these things, as it were for secret diseases, a certain political medicine, both being himself rather willing to be vanquished amongst his fellow-citizens, than to get the better by the injury and dissolution of his country’s rights, and requesting the same of every one else, and teaching them how great a mischief this obstinacy in contending is. But now, rather than they will with honor and benignity mutually yield to their fellow-citizens, kinsmen, neighbors, and colleagues in office, they do, with no less prejudice than shame, carry forth their dissensions to the doors of the pleaders, and put them into the hands of pragmatical lawyers.
