cruelty whatever. Many noble passages might be quoted from this pleading; but only a few can here be selected from the third and fourth, the sixth and seventh, of the entries above mentioned; which may on the whole be considered, when all due reservation is made with regard to the monarchical principle or superstition, as composing altogether a concise and masterly essay on the art and the principles of wise and righteous government.
Many punishments sometimes and in some cases as much discredit a prince as many funerals a physician. The state of things is secured by clemency: severity represseth a few, but irritates more. The lopping of trees makes the boughs shoot out thicker; and the taking away of some kind of enemies increaseth the number. It is then most gracious in a prince to pardon, when many about him would make him cruel; to think then how much he can save, when others tell him how much he can destroy; not to consider what the impotence of others hath demolished, but what his own greatness can sustain. These are a prince's virtues; and they that give him other counsels are but the hangman's factors.
But princes, by hearkening to cruel counsels, become in time obnoxious to the authors, their flatterers and ministers; and are brought to that, that when they would they dare not change them; they must go on, and defend cruelty with cruelty; they cannot alter the habit. It is