beauty
recommends a wife so much to her husband as the probity of her life and
her obedience; for as some few are caught and held only by beauty, so all
are attracted by the other excellences which charm all the world.

"As they fright men from committing crimes by punishments, so they invite
them to the love of virtue by public honours; therefore they erect
statues to the memories of such worthy men as have deserved well of their
country, and set these in their market-places, both to perpetuate the
remembrance of their actions and to be an incitement to their posterity
to follow their example.

"If any man aspires to any office he is sure never to compass it. They
all live easily together, for none of the magistrates are either insolent
or cruel to the people; they affect rather to be called fathers, and, by
being really so, they well deserve the name; and the people pay them all
the marks of honour the more freely because none are exacted from them.
The Prince himself has no distinction, either of garments or of a crown;
but is only distinguished by a sheaf of corn carried before him; as the
High Priest is also known by his being preceded by a person carrying a
wax light.

"They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need
not many. They very much condemn other nations whose laws, together with
the commentaries on them, swell up to so many volumes; for they think it
an unreasonable thing to oblige men to obey a body of laws that are both
of such a bulk, and so dark as not to be read and understood by every one
of the subjects.

"They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of
people whose profession it is to disguise matters and to wrest the laws,
and, therefore, they think it is much better that every man should plead
his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as in other places the client
trusts it to a counsellor; by this means they both cut off many delays
and find out truth more certainly; for after the parties have laid open
the merits of the cause, without those artifices which lawyers are apt to
suggest, the judge examines the whole matter, and supports the simplicity
of such well-meaning persons, whom otherwise crafty men would be sure to
run down; and thus they avoid those evils which appear very remarkably
among all those nations that labour under a vast load of laws. Every one
of them is skilled in their law; for, as it is a very short study, so the
plainest m