uching
them with her teeth but never piercing them therewith. He should behave
like a mouse which though possessed of sharp and pointed teeth still cuts
the feet of sleeping animals in such a manner that they do not at all
become conscious of it. A little by little should be taken from a growing
subject and by this means should he be shorn. The demand should then be
increased gradually till what is taken assumes a fair proportion. The
king should enhance the burthens of his subjects gradually like a person
gradually increasing the burthens of a young bullock. Acting with care
and mildness, he should at last put the reins on them. If the reins are
thus put, they would not become intractable. Indeed, adequate measures
should be employed for making them obedient. Mere entreaties to reduce
them to subjection would not do. It is impossible to behave equally
towards all men. Conciliating those that are foremost, the common people
should be reduced to obedience. Producing disunion (through the agency of
their leaders) among the common people who are to bear the burthens, the
king should himself come forward to conciliate them and then enjoy in
happiness what he will succeed in drawing from them. The king should
never impose taxes unseasonably and on persons unable to bear them. He
should impose them gradually and with conciliation, in proper season and
according to due forms. These contrivances that I declare unto thee are
legitimate means of king-craft. They are not reckoned as methods fraught
with deceit. One who seeks to govern steeds by improper methods only
makes them furious. Drinking-shops, public women, pimps, actors, gamblers
and keepers of gaining houses, and other persons of this kind, who are
sources of disorder to the state, should all be checked. Residing within
the realm, these afflict and injure the better classes of the subjects.
Nobody should ask anything of anyone when there is no distress. Manu
himself in days of old has laid down this injunction in respect of all
men.[254] If all men were to live by asking or begging and abstain from
work, the world would doubtless come to an end. The king alone is
competent to restrain and check. That king who does not restrain his
subjects (from sin) earns a fourth part of the sins committed by his
people (in consequence of the absence of royal protection). This is the
declaration of the Srutis. Since the king shares the sins of his subjects
like their merits, he should, t