The Essays, vol 16 | Page 7

spent as
what they give (a doctrine that I have known in great credit in my time),
either have more particular regard to their own profit than to that of
their master, or ill understand to whom they speak. It is too easy a thing
to inculcate liberality on him who has as much as he will to practise it
with at the expense of others; and, the estimate not being proportioned
to the measure of the gift but to the measure of the means of him who
gives it, it comes to nothing in so mighty hands; they find themselves
prodigal before they can be reputed liberal. And it is but a little
recommendation, in comparison with other royal virtues: and the only
one, as the tyrant Dionysius said, that suits well with tyranny itself. I
should rather teach him this verse of the ancient labourer:
["That whoever will have a good crop must sow with his hand, and not
pour out of the sack."--Plutarch, Apothegms, Whether the Ancients
were more excellent in Arms than in Learning.]
he must scatter it abroad, and not lay it on a heap in one place: and that,
seeing he is to give, or, to say better, to pay and restore to so many
people according as they have deserved, he ought to be a loyal and
discreet disposer. If the liberality of a prince be without measure or
discretion, I had rather he were covetous.
Royal virtue seems most to consist in justice; and of all the parts of
justice that best denotes a king which accompanies liberality, for this
they have particularly reserved to be performed by themselves, whereas
all other sorts of justice they remit to the administration of others. An
immoderate bounty is a very weak means to acquire for them good will;
it checks more people than it allures:
"Quo in plures usus sis, minus in multos uti possis.... Quid autem est
stultius, quam, quod libenter facias, curare ut id diutius facere non
possis;"
["By how much more you use it to many, by so much less will you be
in a capacity to use it to many more. And what greater folly can there
be than to order it so that what you would willingly do, you cannot do

longer."--Cicero, De Offic., ii. 15.]
and if it be conferred without due respect of merit, it puts him out of
countenance who receives it, and is received ungraciously. Tyrants
have been sacrificed to the hatred of the people by the hands of those
very men they have unjustly advanced; such kind of men as buffoons,
panders, fiddlers, and such ragamuffins, thinking to assure to
themselves the possession of benefits unduly received, if they manifest
to have him in hatred and disdain of whom they hold them, and in this
associate themselves to the common judgment and opinion.
The subjects of a prince excessive in gifts grow excessive in asking,
and regulate their demands, not by reason, but by example. We have,
seriously, very often reason to blush at our own impudence: we are
over- paid, according to justice, when the recompense equals our
service; for do we owe nothing of natural obligation to our princes? If
he bear our charges, he does too much; 'tis enough that he contribute to
them: the overplus is called benefit, which cannot be exacted: for the
very name Liberality sounds of Liberty.
In our fashion it is never done; we never reckon what we have received;
we are only for the future liberality; wherefore, the more a prince
exhausts himself in giving, the poorer he grows in friends. How should
he satisfy immoderate desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled?
He who has his thoughts upon taking, never thinks of what he has taken;
covetousness has nothing so properly and so much its own as
ingratitude.
The example of Cyrus will not do amiss in this place, to serve the kings
of these times for a touchstone to know whether their gifts are well or
ill bestowed, and to see how much better that emperor conferred them
than they do, by which means they are reduced to borrow of unknown
subjects, and rather of them whom they have wronged than of them on
whom they have conferred their benefits, and so receive aids wherein
there is nothing of gratuitous but the name. Croesus reproached him
with his bounty, and cast up to how much his treasure would amount if
he had been a little closer-handed. He had a mind to justify his
liberality, and therefore sent despatches into all parts to the grandees of

his dominions whom he had particularly advanced, entreating every
one of them to supply him with as much money as they could, for a
pressing occasion, and to send