fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance,
with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from
thieves, but honesty has no fence against superior cunning; and, since
it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying
and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and
connived at, or hath no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always
undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once
interceding with the king for a criminal, who had wronged his master of
a great sum of money, which he had received by order, and run away with,
and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was
only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me, to offer
as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and, truly, I had
little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different
nations had different customs; for, I confess, I was heartily ashamed.

Although we usually call reward and punishment the two hinges upon which
all government turns, yet I could never observe this maxim to be put in
practice by any nation except that of Lilliput. Whoever can there bring
sufficient proof that he hath strictly observed the laws of his country
for seventy-three moons, hath a claim to certain privileges, according
to his quality and condition of life, with a proportionable sum of out
of a fund appropriated for that use; he likewise acquires the title of
_snillpall_, or _legal_, which is added to his name, but doth not
descend to his posterity. And these people thought it a prodigious
defect of policy among us, when I told them that our laws were enforced
only by penalties, without any mention of reward. It is upon this
account that the image of Justice, in their courts of judicature, is
formed with six eyes, two before, as many behind, and on each side one,
to signify circumspection, with a bag of gold open in her right hand,
and a sword sheath in her left, to show she was more disposed to reward