Now what better ends you can propose to yourselves in the like
ways, I do not so well see as I perceive that there may be worse;
for Lacedaemon yet was free from civil war: but if you employ
your citizens no better than she did, I cannot promise you that
you shall fare so well, because they are still desirous of war
that hope that it may be profitable to them; and the strongest
security you can give of peace, is to make it gainful. Otherwise
men will rather choose that whereby they may break your laws,
than that whereby your laws may break them. Which I speak not so
much in relation to the nobility or such as would be holding, as
to the people or them that would be getting; the passion in these
being so much the stronger, as a man's felicity is weaker in the
fruition of things, than in their prosecution and increase.

"Truly, my lords, it is my fear, that by taking of more
hands, and the best from industry, you will farther endamage it,
than can be repaired by laying on a few, and the worst; while the
nobility must be forced to send their sons to the plough, and, as
if this were not enough, to marry their daughters also to
farmers.

"Sixthly, but I do not see (to come to the last point) how it
is possible that this thing should be brought about, to your good
I mean, though it may to the destruction of many. For that the
agrarian of Israel, or that of Lacedaemon, might stand, is no
such miracle; the lands, without any consideration of the former
proprietor, being surveyed and cast into equal lots, which could
neither be bought, nor sold, nor multiplied: so that they knew
whereabout to have a man. But in this nation no such division can
be introduced, the lands being already in the hands of