[5] Plentiful illustrations might be drawn from Plutarch to the same effect. There is Mutius Scævola, for instance, addressing Porsenna: “Your threatenings I regarded not, but am subdued by your generosity.” There is Porsenna himself, who, as Publicola found, could not be quelled by dint of arms, but whom he converted into a friend to Rome, by “the gentle arts of persuasion.” There is young Alexander, afterwards to be, or to be called, the Great, whose astute father saw that he did not easily submit to authority, because he would not be forced to anything, but that he might be led to his duty by the gentler hand of reason; and therefore, as a wise father, who knew his own son, Philip took the method of persuasion rather than of command. What Plutarch says of the gentler hand of reason, reminds us of Swift’s account of the _Houyhnhnms_, that “they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised or exhorted.” And by the way, Swift remarks in a letter on England’s harsh rule over the Irish, “Supposing even the size of a native’s understanding just equal to that of a dog or a horse, I have often seen these two animals civilized by rewards at least as much as by punishments.” But to return to Plutarch. There is his Flaminius, again, whose appointment to the command in the war with Macedon, he calls very fortunate for Rome, since what was required was “a general who did not want to do everything by force and violence, but rather by gentleness and persuasion.” As Claudian says, _Peragit tranquilla potestas quad violenta nequit_. Fear, observes Adam Smith, is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency. “To attempt to terrify them, serves only to irritate their bad humours, and to confirm them in an opposition which more gentle usage perhaps might easily induce them, either to soften, or to lay aside altogether.”