Not to return one good office for another is inhuman; but to return evil for good is diabolical. There are too many even of this sort, who, the more they owe, the more they hate. There is nothing more dangerous than to oblige those people; for when they are conscious of not paying the debt, they wish the creditor out of the way. It is a mortal hatred, that which arises from the shame of an abused benefit. When we are on the asking side, what a deal of cringing there is, and profession! “Well, I shall never forget this favor, it will be an eternal obligation to me.” But within a while the note is changed, and we hear no more words of it, until, by little and little, it is all quite forgotten. So long as we stand in need of a benefit, there is nothing dearer to us; nor anything cheaper, when we have received it. And yet a man may as well refuse to deliver up a sum of money that is left him in trust without a suit, as not to return a good office without asking; and when we have no value any farther for the benefit, we do commonly care as little for the author. People follow their interest: one man is grateful for his convenience, and another man is ungrateful for the same reason. Some are ungrateful to their own country, and their country no less ungrateful to others; so that the complaint of ingratitude reaches all men. Doth not the son wish for the death of his father, the husband for that of his wife, etc. But who can look for gratitude in an age of so many gaping and craving appetites, where all people take, and none give? In an age of license to all sorts of vanity and wickedness, as lust, gluttony, avarice, envy, ambition, sloth, insolence, levity, contumacy, fear, rashness, private discords and public evils, extravagant and groundless wishes, vain confidences, sickly affections, shameless impieties, rapine authorized, and the violation of all things, sacred and profane: obligations are pursued with sword and poison; benefits are turned into crimes, and that blood most seditiously spilt for which every honest man should expose his own. Those that should be the preservers of their country are the destroyers of it; and it is a matter of dignity to trample upon the government: the sword gives the law, and mercenaries take up arms against their masters. Among these turbulent and unruly motions, what hope is there of finding honesty or good faith, which is the quietest of all virtues? There is no more lively image of human life than that of a conquered city; there is neither mercy, modesty, nor religion; and if we forget our lives, we may well forget our benefits. The world abounds with examples of ungrateful persons, and no less with those of ungrateful governments. Was not Catiline ungrateful? whose malice aimed, not only at the mastering of his country, but at the total destruction of it, by calling in an inveterate and vindictive enemy from beyond the Alps, to wreak their long-thirsted-for revenge,