It is very difficult to fix the particular point of economy; the best error of the two is on the parsimonious side. That may be corrected; the other cannot. The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters turns upon one shilling. A man’s character, in that particular, depends a great deal upon the report of his own servants; a mere trifle above common wages makes their report favorable. Take care always to form your establishment so much within your income as to leave a sufficient fund for unexpected contingencies and a prudent liberality. There is hardly a year, in any man’s life, in which a small sum of ready money may not be employed to great advantage. POLITICAL MAXIMS FROM CARDINAL DE RETZ.[57] It is often madness to engage in a conspiracy; but nothing is so effectual to bring people afterward to their senses, at least for a time. As in such undertakings, the danger subsists, even after the business is over; this obliges to be prudent and circumspect in the succeeding moments. 2. A middling understanding, being susceptible of unjust suspicions, is consequently, of all characters, the least fit to head a faction; as the most indispensable qualification in such a chief is to suppress, in many occasions, and to conceal in all, even the best grounded suspicions. 3. Nothing animates and gives strength to a commotion so much as the ridicule of him against whom it is raised. 4. Among people used to affairs of moment, secrecy is much less uncommon than is generally believed. 5. Descending to the little is the surest way of attaining to an equality with the great. 6. Fashion, though powerful in all things, is not more so in any, than in being well or ill at court. There are times when disgrace is a kind of fire, that purifies all bad qualities, and illuminates every good one. There are others, in which the being out of favor is unbecoming a man of character. 7. Sufferings, in people of the first rank, supply the want of virtue. 8. There is a confused kind of jumble, which practice sometimes teaches; but it is never to be understood by speculation. 9. The greatest powers cannot injure a man’s character, whose reputation is unblemished among his party. 10. We are as often duped by diffidence, as by confidence. 11. The greatest evils are not arrived at their utmost period until those who are in power have lost all sense of shame. At such a time those who should obey shake off all respect and subordination. Then is lethargic indolence roused; but roused by convulsions.