It was the speech of the Roman people, to whom the name of _king_ had been rendered odious, as well by the tyranny of the Tarquins as by the genius and decretals of that city; it was the speech, I say, of the public, however pronounced from a private mouth, (if yet Cato the censor were no more than such): _that all kings are to be reckoned amongst ravenous beasts_. But what a beast of prey was the Roman people; whilst with its conquering eagles it erected its proud trophies so far and wide over the world, bringing the Africans, the Asiatics, the Macedonians, and the Achæans, with many other despoiled nations, into a specious bondage, with the pretence of preferring them to be denizens of Rome! So that if Cato’s saying were a wise one, it was every whit as wise, that of Pontius Telesinus; who flying about with open mouth through all the companies of his army in that famous encounter which he had with Sylla, cried out: that _Rome herself as well as Sylla, was to be razed; for that there would always be wolves and depredators of their liberty, unless the forest that lodged them were grubbed up by the roots_. To speak impartially, both sayings are very true: that _man to man is a kind of God_; and that _man to man is an arrant wolf_. The first is true, if we compare citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare cities. In the one, there is some analogy of similitude with the Deity; to wit, justice and charity, the twin sisters of peace. But in the other, good men must defend themselves by taking to them for a sanctuary the two daughters of war, deceit and violence: that is, in plain terms, a mere brutal rapacity. Which although men object to one another as a reproach, by an inbred custom which they have of beholding their own actions in the persons of other men, wherein, as in a mirror, all things on the left side appear to be on the right, and all things on the right side to be as plainly on the left; yet the natural right of preservation, which we all receive from the uncontrolable dictates of necessity, will not admit it to be a vice, though it confess it to be an unhappiness. Now that with Cato himself, a person of so great a renown for wisdom, animosity should so prevail instead of judgment, and partiality instead of reason, that the very same thing which he thought just in his popular state, he should censure as unjust in a monarchical; other men perhaps may have leisure to admire. But I have been long since of this opinion; that there was never yet any more than vulgar prudence, that had the luck of being acceptable to the giddy people; but either it hath not been understood, or else having been so hath been levelled and cried down. The more eminent actions and apothegms, both of the Greeks and Romans, have been indebted for their eulogies not so much to the _reason_, as to the _greatness_ of them; and very many times to that prosperous usurpation, (with which our histories do so mutually upbraid