reign hand: private
men have therein the most right; for, to take it exactly, a king has
nothing properly his own; he owes himself to others: authority is not
given in favour of the magistrate, but of the people; a superior is never
made so for his own profit, but for the profit of the inferior, and a
physician for the sick person, and not for himself: all magistracy, as
well as all art, has its end out of itself wherefore the tutors of young
princes, who make it their business to imprint in them this virtue of
liberality, and preach to them to deny nothing and to think nothing so
well spent as what they give (a doctrine that I have known in great
credit in my time), either have more particular regard to their own
profit than to that of their master, or ill understand to whom they
speak. It is too easy a thing to inculcate liberality on him who has as
much as he will to practise it with at the expense of others; and, the
estimate not being proportioned to the measure of the gift but to the
measure of the means of him who gives it, it comes to nothing in so
mighty hands; they find themselves prodigal before they can be reputed
liberal. And it is but a little recommendation, in comparison with other
royal virtues: and the only one, as the tyrant Dionysius said, that suits
well with tyranny itself. I should rather teach him this verse of the
ancient labourer:

["That whoever will have a good crop must sow with his hand, and not
pour out of the sack."--Plutarch, Apothegms, Whether the Ancients
were more excellent in Arms than in Learning.]

he must scatter it abroad, and not lay it on a heap in one place: and
that, seeing he is to give, or, to say better, to pay and restore to so
many people according as they have deserved, he ought to be a loyal and
discreet disposer. If the liberality of a prince be without measure or
discretion, I had rather he were covetous.

Royal virtue seems most to consist in justice; and of all the parts of
justice that best denotes a king which accompanies liberality, for this
they have particularly reserved to be performed by themselves, whereas
all other sorts of justice they remit to the administration of others.
An immoderate bounty is a very weak means to acquire for them good will;
it checks more people than it allures:

"Quo in plures usus sis, minus in multos uti possis....
Quid autem est stultius, quam, quod libenter facias,
curare ut