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need not communicate with them: your communication is with the people. You take the people as you find them: you give them to themselves: and if afterwards they choose to give themselves to any body else, it is their doing, you neither need, nor ought to have any concern in it.
Oh, but the good citizens! what will be come of the good citizens?—What will become of them?—their fate depends upon yourselves. Give up your dominion, you may save them: fight for it, you destroy them. Secure, if you can do it without force, a fair emission of the wishes of all the citizens, if what you call the good citizens are the majority, they will govern: if a minority, they neither will nor ought to govern, but you may give them safety if you please. This you may do for them at any rate: whether those in whose hands you find them submit to collect the sense of the majority or refuse it. Conclude not, that if you cease to maintain tyranny, you have no power to insure justice. Think not, that those who resist oppression, must be deaf to kindness. Set the example of justice, you who if you preferred destruction might use force, set the example of
