When Dionysius the tyrant heard this, (with his companions about him) flesh and blood could hold no longer; and he cried out in a rage, “That roguy philosopher has told a thousand lies. Legislators, with a pox? Yes, yes, they are sweet legislators, and princes have many a fair obligation to them. No, no, sirrah,” says he to Solon, “you are all of you a company of quacks; ye prate and speculate of things ye don’t understand; and with your damned moralities set the people agog upon liberty, cry up the doctrine of free-born subjects, and then our portion is persecution in one world and infamy in t’other.”
“We shall have a fine time on’t, my most gracious prince,” cried Julian the apostate, staring Lucifer in the face, “when these dunghill pedants, a company of cock-brained, ridiculous, mortified, ill-bred, beggarly tatterdemalions, shall come to erect a committee for politics, and pass sentence upon governors and governments; stiling themselves (forsooth) the supporters of both, without any more skill than my horse in what belongs to either. Tell me,” says he, “if a brave prince had not better be damned than subject himself to hear one of these turdy-facy-paty-nasty lowsie-fartical rascals, with a scabbed head and a plantation of lice in his beard, and his eyes crept into the nape of his neck, pronouncing, for an aphorism, that a prince that looks only to one is a tyrant, and that a true king is the shepherd and servant of his people. Ah, rash and besotted coxcombs! If a king looks only to others, who shall look to him? As if princes had not enemies enough abroad, without being so to themselves too. But you may write your hearts out, and never the nearer. Where’s our sovereignty? if we have not our subjects’ lives and estates at our mercy. And where’s our absolute power? if we submit to the counsels of our vassals. If we have not to satisfy our appetites, avarice and revenge, we want power to discharge the noblest ends of government. These contemplative idiots would have us make choice of good officers, to keep the bad in order; which were a madness, in our condition. Let them be complaisant, and no matter for any other merit or virtue. A parcel of good offices, handsomely disposed among a pack of cheats and atheists, will make us a party another day; whereas all is lost that’s bestowed upon honest men, for they’re our enemies; speak truth then all of ye, and shame the devil; for the butcher fats his sheep only for the shambles.