rning it, whereas the magistrate's losing the
power of religion loses the liberty of conscience, which in that case
has nothing to protect it. But if the people be otherwise taught,
it concerns them to look about them, and to distinguish between the
shrieking of the lapwing and the voice of the turtle.

To come to civil laws. If they stand one way and the balance another,
it is the case of a government which of necessity must be new modelled;
wherefore your lawyers, advising you upon the like occasions to fit your
government to their laws, are no more to be regarded than your tailor
if he should desire you to fit your body to his doublet. There is
also danger in the plausible pretence of reforming the law, except the
government be first good, in which case it is a good tree, and (trouble
not yourselves overmuch) brings not forth evil fruit; otherwise, if
the tree be evil, you can never reform the fruit, or if a root that is
naught bring forth fruit of this kind that seems to be good, take the
more heed, for it is the ranker poison. It was nowise probable, if
Augustus had not made excellent laws, that the bowels of Rome could have
come to be so miserably eaten out by the tyranny of Tiberius and his
successors. The best rule as to your laws in general is that they be
few. Rome, by the testimony of Cicero, Was best governed under those of
the twelve tables; and by that of Tacitus, Plurimoe leges, corruptissima
respublica. You will be told that where the laws be few they leave much
to arbitrary power; but where they be many, they leave more, the laws
in this case, according to Justinian and the best lawyers, being as
litigious as the suitors. Solon made few, Lycurgus fewer, laws; and
commonwealths have the fewest at this day of all other governments.

Now to conclude this part with a word de judiciis, or of the
constitution or course of courts; it is a discourse not otherwise
capable of being well managed but by particular examples, both the
constitution and course of courts being divers in different governments,
but best beyond compare in Venice, where they regard not so much the
arbitrary power of their courts as the constitution of them, whereby
that arbitrary power being altogether unable to retard or do hurt to
business, produces and must produce the quickest despatch, and the most
righteous dictates of justice that are perhaps in human nature. The
manner I shall not stand in this place to describe, because it is
exem