be new modelled; wherefore your lawyers, advising you upon the
like occasions to fit your government to their laws, are no more
to be regarded than your tailor if he should desire you to fit
your body to his doublet. There is also danger in the plausible
pretence of reforming the law, except the government be first
good, in which case it is a good tree, and (trouble not
yourselves overmuch) brings not forth evil fruit; otherwise, if
the tree be evil, you can never reform the fruit, or if a root
that is naught bring forth fruit of this kind that seems to be
good, take the more heed, for it is the ranker poison. It was
nowise probable, if Augustus had not made excellent laws, that
the bowels of Rome could have come to be so miserably eaten out
by the tyranny of Tiberius and his successors. The best rule as
to your laws in general is that they be few. Rome, by the
testimony of Cicero, Was best governed under those of the twelve
tables; and by that of Tacitus, Plurimoe leges, corruptissima
respublica. You will be told that where the laws be few they
leave much to arbitrary power.; but where they be many, they
leave more, the laws in this case, according to Justinian and the
best lawyers, being as litigious as the suitors. Solon made few,
Lycurgus fewer, laws; and commonwealths have the fewest at this
day of all other governments.

Now to conclude this part with a word de judiciis, or of the
constitution or course of courts; it is a discourse not otherwise
capable of being well managed but by particular examples, both
the constitution and course of courts being divers in different
governments, but best beyond compare in Venice, where they regard
not so much the arbitrary power of their courts as the
constitution of them, whereby that arbitrary power being