from the latter on account of the penalties, and will become better
as individuals and more serviceable for your employment in the public
service.

"It is an excellent achievement also to render private disputes as few as
possible and their settlement as rapid as may be. But it is best of all
to cut short the impetuosity of communities, and, if under guise of some
appeals to your sovereignty and safety and good fortune they undertake to
use force upon anybody or to undertake exploits or expenditures that are
beyond their power, not to permit it. You should abolish altogether their
enmities and rivalries among themselves and not authorize them to create
any empty titles or anything else which will breed differences between
them. All will readily obey you both in this and in every other matter,
private and public, if you never permit any one to transgress this rule.
Non-enforcement of laws makes null and void even wisely framed precepts.
Consequently you should not allow persons to ask for what you are not
accustomed to give. Try to compel them to avoid diligently this very
practice of petitioning for something prohibited. This is what I have to
say on that subject.

[-38-] "I advise you never to make use of your authority against all the
citizens at once nor to deem it in any way curtailed if you do not do
absolutely everything that is within your power. But in proportion as you
are able to carry out all your wishes, you must be anxious to wish only
what is proper, make always a self-examination, to see whether what you
are doing is right or not, what conduct will cause people to love you,
and what not, in order that you may perform the one set of acts and avoid
the other. Do not admit the thought that you will sufficiently escape
the reputation of acting contrary to this rule, if only you hear no one
censuring you; and do not look for any one to be so mad as to reproach