For Like Other
Nations In A Barbarous State, This People, Although They Are
Strangers To The Principles Of Honour, Yet Above All Things Desire
To Be Honoured; And Approve And Respect In Others That Truth Which
They Themselves Do Not Profess.
Whenever the natural inconstancy
of their indisposition shall induce them to revolt, let punishment
instantly follow the offence; but
When they shall have submitted
themselves again to order, and made proper amends for their faults
(as it is the custom of bad men to remember wrath after quarrels),
let their former transgression be overlooked, and let them enjoy
security and respect, as long as they continue faithful. Thus, by
mild treatment they will be invited to obedience and the love of
peace, and the thought of certain punishment will deter them from
rash attempts. We have often observed persons who, confounding
these matters, by complaining of faults, depressing for services,
flattering in war, plundering in peace, despoiling the weak, paying
respect to revolters, by thus rendering all things confused, have
at length been confounded themselves. Besides, as circumstances
which are foreseen do less mischief, and as that state is happy
which thinks of war in the time of peace, let the wise man be upon
his guard, and prepared against the approaching inconveniences of
war, by the construction of forts, the widening of passes through
woods, and the providing of a trusty household. For those who are
cherished and sustained during the time of peace, are more ready to
come forward in times of danger, and are more confidently to be
depended upon; and as a nation unsubdued ever meditates plots under
the disguise of friendship, let not the prince or his governor
entrust the protection of his camp or capital to their fidelity.
By the examples of many remarkable men, some of whom have been
cruelly put to death, and others deprived of their castles and
dignities, through their own neglect and want of care, we may see,
that the artifices of a crafty and subdued nation are much more to
be dreaded than their open warfare; their good-will than their
anger, their honey than their gall, their malice than their attack,
their treachery than their aggression, and their pretended
friendship more than their open enmity.
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