whoever from time to time commits a crime should pay some penalty. The
majority of men are not brought to reason by suggestion or by example,
but it is absolutely requisite to punish them by disenfranchisement, by
exile, and by death; and this often happens in so great an empire and in
so large a multitude of men, especially during a change of government.
Now if you appointed other men to judge these wrongdoers, they would
acquit them speedily, particularly all whom you may be thought to hate.
For judges secure a pretended authority when they act in any way contrary
to the wish of the ruling power. If, again, any are convicted, they will
believe they have been condemned on account of instructions for which
you are responsible. However, if you sit as judge yourself, you will be
compelled to chastise many of the peers,--and this is not favorable,--and
you will certainly be thought to be setting some of them right in anger
rather than in justice. No one believes that those who have the power to
use compulsion can execute judgment with justice, but everybody thinks
that out of shame they spread out a mere phantom and rough picture of
government in front of the truth, in order that under the legitimate
name of court they may fulfill their desire. This is what happens in
monarchies. In democracies, when any one is accused of committing a
private wrong, he is made defendant in a private suit before judges who
are his equals: or, if he is accused for a public crime, such a man has
empaneled a jury of his peers, whoever the lot shall designate. It is
easier for men to bear their decisions, since they do not think that any
verdict rendered is due to the power of the judge or has been wrung from
him as a favor.[1]

[-8-] "Then again there are many, apart from any criminals, some priding
themselves on birth, others on wealth, others on something different,
in general not bad men, who are by nature opposed to the conception of
monarchy. If a ruler allows them to become strong, he cannot live in