ht enjoy all the privileges of his high
station to the general joy of all men, without fear? for it is a
mistake to suppose that the king can be safe in a state where nothing
is safe from the king; he can only purchase a life without anxiety
for himself by guaranteeing the same for his subjects. He need not
pile up lofty citadels, escarp steep hills, cut away the sides of
mountains, and fence himself about with many lines of walls and
towers: clemency will render a king safe even upon an open plain. The
one fortification which can not be stormed is the love of his
countrymen....

The reason why cruelty is the most hateful of all vices is that it
goes first beyond ordinary limits, and then beyond those of humanity;
that it devises new kinds of punishments, calls ingenuity to aid it in
inventing devices for varying and lengthening men's torture, and takes
delight in their sufferings: this accursed disease of the mind reaches
its highest pitch of madness when cruelty itself turns into pleasure
and the act of killing a man becomes enjoyment. Such a ruler is soon
cast down from his throne; his life is attempted by poison one day and
by the sword the next; he is exposed to as many dangers as there are
men to whom he is dangerous, and he is sometimes destroyed by the
plots of individuals, and at others by a general insurrection. Whole
communities are not roused to action by unimportant outrages on
private persons; but cruelty which takes a wider range, and from which
no one is safe, becomes a mark for all men's weapons. Very small
snakes escape our notice, and the whole country does not combine to
destroy them; but when one of them exceeds the usual size and grows
into a monster, when it poisons fountains with its spittle, scorches
herbage with its breath, and spreads ruin wherever it crawls, we
shoot at it with military engines. Trifling evils may cheat us and
elude our observation, but we gird up our loins to attack great ones.
One sick person does not so much as disquiet the house in which he
lies; but when frequent deaths show that a plague is raging, there is
a general outcry, men take to flight and shake their fists angrily at
the very gods themselves. If a fire breaks out under one single roof,
the family and the neighbors pour water upon it; but a wide
conflagration which has consumed many houses must be smothered under
the ruins of a whole quarter of a city....

I have been especially led to write about clemency, Ne