VI. This is the creed, not of a few people only, but of the world at large, and it has been so in all times. What Machiavel, Hobbes, and other infamous politicians have inserted in their works, is the same which you hear every day in juntos of people; to wit, that virtue is neglected, that vice is caressed and exalted; that truth and justice are banished from courts; and that flattery and lying are the wings, with which people ascend to high stations. But this I suppose to be an error, and that it ought to be classed in the catalogue of common errors, and in my reasoning on this subject, I shall undertake to demonstrate that it is one, by informing mankind, that contrary to the opinion of the world, the most refined, and the most safe policy, is that which is founded in justice and truth. SECT. II. VII. I shall begin with confessing, that those who aspire at being usurpers, can never attain their ends, but by wicked means, because to the goal of insolence, there is no road through the land of virtue. But who will say these are subtil politicians? They are the most blind and mistaken of all, because they pursue a road, that is all over drenched with blood. Very few have travelled through it, who before they arrived at the point in view, have not lost their lives in a violent and an ignominious manner. You hardly see any thing in this whole rout, but men hanging on gibbets, carcasses extended on scaffolds, limbs torn off by wild beasts, and the ashes of victims, who have been sacrificed to the vengeance of the party offended. You may find here or there one, who, by pursuing this road, has at the end of his career attained sovereignty. But is the accidental success of one or two lucky people, a counterbalance to so horrid and bloody a spectacle? Who will be encouraged to trust himself in a sea, strewed with rocks, and covered with wrecks and dead bodies, because in the course of many ages, three or four vessels which have navigated it, have arrived safe at their desired port? We should add, to the hazard of shipwreck, the toils and terrors of the navigation; for it is certain, that those who navigate a sea of danger and horror, before their catastrophe, endure a tempest within their souls. Those who from private people aspire at being sovereigns, lead a life of perpetual alarms and anxiety, in order afterwards to die with ignominy: so that their toil and their danger remain cemented to their fortune, even after they have accomplished or succeeded in their undertaking; for all tyrants live in terror, and rarely or never die in their beds. But how can such as these be considered even as middling politicians? Policy, in the sense we here use the word, means the art of negotiating one’s own convenience. But what convenience can a man find, by travelling through a laborious life to a violent death? I say, that so far from contemplating such people as able politicians, we ought to esteem them consummate fools.