mitated their patter, there is
nothing more obvious in nature, seeing a man who wears the same flesh
but a short time, is nevertheless the same man, and of the same genius;
and whence is this but from the constancy of nature, in holding a man
to her orders? Wherefore keep also to your orders. But this is a mean
request; your orders will be worth little if they do not hold you to
them, wherefore embark. They are like a ship, if you be once aboard,
you do not carry them, but they you; and see how Venice stands to her
tackling: you will no more forsake them than you will leap into the sea.

"But they are very many and difficult. O my Lords, what seaman casts
away his card because it has four-and-twenty points of the compass? and
yet those are very near as many and as difficult as the orders in the
whole circumference of your commonwealth. Consider, how have we been
tossed with every wind of doctrine, lost by the glib tongues of your
demagogues and grandees in our own havens? A company of fiddlers that
have disturbed your rest for your groat; L2,000 to one, L3,000 a year to
another, has been nothing. And for what? Is there one of them that
yet knows what a commonwealth is? And are you yet afraid of such a
government in which these shall not dare to scrape for fear of the
statute? Themistocles could not fiddle, but could make of a small city
a great commonwealth: these have fiddled, and for your money, till they
have brought a great commonwealth to a small city.

"It grieves me, while I consider how, and from what causes, imaginary
difficulties will be aggravated, that the foregoing orders are not
capable of any greater clearness in discourse or writing; but if a man
should make a book, describing every trick and passage, it would fare no
otherwise with a game at cards; and this is no more, if a man plays upon
the square. 'There is a great difference,' says Verulamius, 'between a
cunning man and a wise man (between a demagogue and a legislator), not
only in point of honesty, but in point of ability as there be that can
pack the cards, and yet cannot play well; so there be some that are good
in canvasses and fractions, that are otherwise weak men.' Allow me but
these orders, and let them come with their cards in their sleeves,
or pack if they can. 'Again,' says he, 'it is one thing to understand
persons, and another to understand matters; for many are perfect in
men's humors that are not greatly capable of the real part of bu