The Anatomy of Melancholy: Philosophy Classic. Robert Burton

the princes and potentates are immoderate in lust, hypocrites, epicures, of no religion, but in show: Quid hypocrisi fragilius? what so brittle and unsure? what sooner subverts their estates than wandering and raging lusts, on their subjects' wives, daughters? to say no worse. That they should facem praeferre, lead the way to all virtuous actions, are the ringleaders oftentimes of all mischief and dissolute courses, and by that means their countries are plagued, [489]"and they themselves often ruined, banished, or murdered by conspiracy of their subjects, as Sardanapalus was, Dionysius Junior, Heliogabalus, Periander, Pisistratus, Tarquinius, Timocrates, Childericus, Appius Claudius, Andronicus, Galeacius Sforza, Alexander Medices," &c.

      Whereas the princes or great men are malicious, envious, factious, ambitious, emulators, they tear a commonwealth asunder, as so many Guelfs and Gibelines disturb the quietness of it, [490]and with mutual murders let it bleed to death; our histories are too full of such barbarous inhumanities, and the miseries that issue from them.

      Whereas they be like so many horseleeches, hungry, griping, corrupt, [491] covetous, avaritice mancipia, ravenous as wolves, for as Tully writes: qui praeest prodest, et qui pecudibus praeest, debet eorum utilitati inservire: or such as prefer their private before the public good. For as [492]he said long since, res privatae publicis semper officere. Or whereas they be illiterate, ignorant, empirics in policy, ubi deest facultas, [493]virtus (Aristot. pol. 5, cap. 8.) et scientia, wise only by inheritance, and in authority by birthright, favour, or for their wealth and titles; there must needs be a fault, [494]a great defect: because as an [495]old philosopher affirms, such men are not always fit. "Of an infinite number, few alone are senators, and of those few, fewer good, and of that small number of honest, good, and noble men, few that are learned, wise, discreet and sufficient, able to discharge such places, it must needs turn to the confusion of a state."

      For as the [496]Princes are, so are the people; Qualis Rex, talis grex: and which [497]Antigonus right well said of old, qui Macedonia regem erudit, omnes etiam subditos erudit, he that teacheth the king of Macedon, teacheth all his subjects, is a true saying still.

      "For Princes are the glass, the school, the book,

       Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look."

      ———"Velocius et citius nos

       Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla domestica, magnis

       Cum subeant animos auctoribus."———[498]

      Their examples are soonest followed, vices entertained, if they be profane, irreligious, lascivious, riotous, epicures, factious, covetous, ambitious, illiterate, so will the commons most part be, idle, unthrifts, prone to lust, drunkards, and therefore poor and needy ([Greek: hae penia stasin empoiei kai kakourgian], for poverty begets sedition and villainy) upon all occasions ready to mutiny and rebel, discontent still, complaining, murmuring, grudging, apt to all outrages, thefts, treasons, murders, innovations, in debt, shifters, cozeners, outlaws, Profligatae famae ac vitae. It was an old [499]politician's aphorism, "They that are poor and bad envy rich, hate good men, abhor the present government, wish for a new, and would have all turned topsy-turvy." When Catiline rebelled in Rome, he got a company of such debauched rogues together, they were his familiars and coadjutors, and such have been your rebels most part in all ages, Jack Cade, Tom Straw, Kette, and his companions.

      Where they be generally riotous and contentious, where there be many discords, many laws, many lawsuits, many lawyers and many physicians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered, melancholy state, as [500]Plato long since maintained: for where such kind of men swarm, they will make more work for themselves, and that body politic diseased, which was otherwise sound. A general mischief in these our times, an insensible plague, and never so many of them: "which are now multiplied" (saith Mat. Geraldus, [501]a lawyer himself,) "as so many locusts, not the parents, but the plagues of the country, and for the most part a supercilious, bad, covetous, litigious generation of men." [502]Crumenimulga natio &c. A purse-milking nation, a clamorous company, gowned vultures, [503]qui ex injuria vivent et sanguine civium, thieves and seminaries of discord; worse than any pollers by the highway side, auri accipitres, auri exterebronides, pecuniarum hamiolae, quadruplatores, curiae harpagones, fori tintinabula, monstra hominum, mangones, &c. that take upon them to make peace, but are indeed the very disturbers of our peace, a company of irreligious harpies, scraping, griping catchpoles, (I mean our common hungry pettifoggers, [504]rabulas forenses, love and honour in the meantime all good laws, and worthy lawyers, that are so many [505]oracles and pilots of a well-governed commonwealth). Without art, without judgment, that do more harm, as [506]Livy said, quam bella externa, fames, morbive, than sickness, wars, hunger, diseases; "and cause a most incredible destruction of a commonwealth," saith [507]Sesellius, a famous civilian sometimes in Paris, as ivy doth by an oak, embrace it so long, until it hath got the heart out of it, so do they by such places they inhabit; no counsel at all, no justice, no speech to be had, nisi eum premulseris, he must be fed still, or else he is as mute as a fish, better open an oyster without a knife. Experto crede (saith [508] Salisburiensis) in manus eorum millies incidi, et Charon immitis qui nulli pepercit unquam, his longe clementior est; "I speak out of experience, I have been a thousand times amongst them, and Charon himself is more gentle than they; [509]he is contented with his single pay, but they multiply still, they are never satisfied," besides they have damnificas linguas, as he terms it, nisi funibus argenteis vincias, they must be fed to say nothing, and [510]get more to hold their peace than we can to say our best. They will speak their clients fair, and invite them to their tables, but as he follows it, [511]"of all injustice there is none so pernicious as that of theirs, which when they deceive most, will seem to be honest men." They take upon them to be peacemakers, et fovere causas humilium, to help them to their right, patrocinantur afflictis, [512]but all is for their own good, ut loculos pleniorom exhauriant, they plead for poor men gratis, but they are but as a stale to catch others. If there be no jar, [513]they can make a jar, out of the law itself find still some quirk or other, to set them at odds, and continue causes so long, lustra aliquot, I know not how many years before the cause is heard, and when 'tis judged and determined by reason of some tricks and errors, it is as fresh to begin, after twice seven years sometimes, as it was at first; and so they prolong time, delay suits till they have enriched themselves, and beggared their clients. And, as [514]Cato inveighed against Isocrates' scholars, we may justly tax our wrangling lawyers, they do consenescere in litibus, are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their client's causes hereafter, some of them in hell. [515] Simlerus complains amongst the Swissers of the advocates in his time, that when they should make an end, they began controversies, and "protract their causes many years, persuading them their title is good, till their patrimonies be consumed, and that they have spent more in seeking than the thing is worth, or they shall get by the recovery." So that he that goes to law, as the proverb is, [516]holds a wolf by the ears, or as a sheep in a storm runs for shelter to a brier, if he prosecute his cause he is consumed, if he surcease his suit he loseth all; [517]what difference? They had wont heretofore, saith Austin, to end matters, per communes arbitros; and so in Switzerland (we are informed by [518]Simlerus), "they had some common arbitrators or daysmen in every town, that made a friendly composition betwixt man and man, and he much wonders at their honest simplicity, that could keep peace so well, and end such great causes by that means." At [519]Fez in Africa, they have neither lawyers nor advocates; but if there be any controversies amongst them, both parties plaintiff and defendant come to their Alfakins or chief judge, "and at once without any farther appeals or pitiful delays, the cause is heard and ended." Our forefathers, as [520]a worthy chorographer of ours observes, had wont pauculis cruculis aureis, with a few golden crosses, and lines in verse, make all conveyances, assurances. And such was the candour and integrity of succeeding ages, that a deed (as I have oft seen) to convey a whole manor, was implicite contained in some twenty lines or thereabouts; like that scede or Sytala Laconica, so much renowned of old in all contracts, which [521]Tully so earnestly commends to Atticus, Plutarch in his Lysander, Aristotle polit.: Thucydides, lib. 1, [522]Diodorus and Suidus approve and magnify, for that laconic brevity in this kind; and well they might, for, according to [523]Tertullian, certa sunt paucis, there is much more certainty in fewer words. And so was