. If I must run the hazard of an
uncertain choice, I am rather willing to have it under such a one as is
more confident in his opinions than I am in mine, whose ground and
foundation I find to be very slippery and unsure.

Yet I do not easily change, by reason that I discern the same weakness in
contrary opinions:

"Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa
esse videtur, et lubrica;"

["The very custom of assenting seems to be dangerous
and slippery."--Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.]

especially in political affairs, there is a large field open for changes
and contestation:

"Justa pari premitur veluti cum pondere libra,
Prona, nec hac plus pane sedet, nec surgit ab illa."

["As a just balance, pressed with equal weight, neither dips
nor rises on either side."--Tibullus, iv. 41.]

Machiavelli's writings, for example, were solid enough for the subject,
yet were they easy enough to be controverted; and they who have done so,
have left as great a facility of controverting theirs; there was never
wanting in that kind of argument replies and replies upon replies, and as
infinite a contexture of debates as our wrangling lawyers have extended
in favour of long suits:

"Caedimur et totidem plagis consumimus hostem;"

["We are slain, and with as many blows kill the enemy" (or),
"It is a fight wherein we exhaust each other by mutual wounds."
--Horace, Epist., ii. 2, 97.]

the reasons have little other foundation than experience, and the variety
of human events presenting us with infinite examples of all sorts of
forms. An understanding person of our times says: That whoever would, in
contradiction to our almanacs, write cold where they say hot, and wet
where they say dry, and always put the contrary to what they foretell; if
he were to lay a wager, he would not care which side he took, excepting
where no uncertainty could fall out, as to promise excessive heats at
Christmas, or extremity of cold at Midsummer. I have the same opinion of
these political controversies; be on which side you will, you have as
fair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far
as to shock principles that are broad and manifest. And yet, in my
conceit, in public affairs, there is no government so ill, provided it be
ancient and has been constant, that is not better than change and
alteration.

Our manners are infinitely c