Or whereas they be illiterate, ignorant, Empericks in policie, ubi deest facultas, virtus (Aristot. pol. 5. cap. 8.) & scientia, wise only by inheritance, and in authority by birth-right, favour, or for their wealth and titles; there must needs be a fault, a great defect: because as an old Philosopher affirms, such men are not alwayes fit. Of an infinite number, few alone are Senators, and of those few, fewer good, and of that small number of honest good and noble men, few that are learned, wise, discreet and sufficient, able to discharge such places, it must needs turn to the confusion of a State.

For as the Princes are, so are the people: Qualis Rex, talis grex: and which Antigonus right well said of old, qui Macedoniæ regem erudit, omnes etiam subditos erudit, he that teacheth the King of Macedon, teacheth all his subjects, is a true saying still. For Princes are the glass, the school, the book, Where subjects eyes do learn, do reade, do look,

——Velocius & citius nos Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla domestica, magnis Cum subeant animos authoribus—— their examples are soonest followed, vices entertained, if they be prophane, irreligious, lascivious, riotous, Epicures, factious, covetous, ambitious, illiterate, so will the commons most part be, idle, unthrifts, prone to lust, drunkards, and therefore poor and needy (ἡ πενία στάσιν ἐμποιεῖ καὶ κακουργίαν, for poverty begets sedition and villany)

upon all occasions ready to mutine and rebel, discontent still, complaining, murmuring, grudging, apt to all outrages, thefts, treasons, murders, innovations, in debt, shifters, cozeners, outlaws, Profligatæ famæ ac vitæ. It was an old Politicians Aphorism, They that are poor and bad, envie rich, hate good men, abhor the present government, wish for a new, and would have all turned topsie turvie. When Cateline rebelled in Rome, he got a company of such deboshed rogues together, they were his familiars and coadjutors, and such have been your rebels most part in all ages, Jack Cade, Tom Straw, Kette, & his companions.

Where they be generally riotous and contentious, where there be many discords, many laws, many law-suits, many Lawyers, and many Physitians, it is a manifest sign of a distempered, melancholy state, as Plato long since maintained: for where such kinde of men swarm, they will make more work for themselves, and that body politick diseased, which was otherwise sound.

A generall mischief in these our times, an unsensible plague, and never so many of them: which are now multiplyed (saith Mat. Geraldus, a Lawyer himself,) as so many Locusts, not the parents, but the plagues of the Country, and for the most part a supercilious, bad, covetous, litigious generation of men. Crumenimulga natio, &c. A purse-milking nation, a clamorous company, gowned vultures, qui ex injuria vivunt & sanguine civium, theeves and Seminaries of discord;

worse then any polers by the high way side, auri accipitres, auri exterebronides, pecuniarum hamiolæ, quadruplatores, Curiæ harpagones, fori tintinabula, monstra hominum, mangones, &c. that take upon them to make peace, but are indeed the very disturbers of our Peace, a company of irreligious Harpies, scraping, griping catch-poles (I mean our common hungry Pettefoggers, rabulas forenses, love and honour in the mean time, all good laws, and worthy Lawyers, that are so many Oracles and Pilots of a well governed common-wealth.)

Without Art, without Judgement, that do more harm, as Livy said, quam bella externa, fames, morbive, then sicknesse, wars, hunger, diseases; and cause a most incredible destruction of a Common-wealth, saith Sesellius, a famous civilian sometimes in Paris. As Ivie doth by an Oke, imbrace it so long, untill it hath got the heart out of it, so do they by such places they inhabite; no counsel at all, no justice, no speech to be had, nisi eum præmulseris, he must be feed still, or else he is as mute as a fish, better open an Oyster without a knife.

Experto crede (saith Salisburiensis) in manus eorum millies incidi, & Charon immitis qui nulli pepercit unquam, his longè clementior est; I speak out of experience, I have been a thousand times amongst them, and Charon himself is more gentle then they: he is contented with his single pay, but they multiply still, they are never satisfied:

besides, they have damnificas linguas, as he terms it, nisi funibus argenteis vincias, they must be feed to say nothing, and get more to hold their peace, then we can to say our best. They will speak their clients fair, and invite them to their tables, but as he follows it, of all injustice, there is none so pernicious as that of theirs, which when they deceive most, will seem to be honest men.

They take upon them to be peace-makers, & fovere causas humilium, to help them to their right, patrocinantur afflictis, but all is for their own good, ut loculos pleniorum exhauriant, they plead for poor men gratis, but they are but as a stale to catch others.