So thieves
that rob in small parties and break houses, when they are taken, are
hanged; but when they multiply and grow up into armies and are able to
take towns, the same things are called heroic actions, and acknowledged
for such by all the world. Courts of justice, for the most part, commit
greater crimes than they punish, and do those that sue in them more
injuries than they can possibly receive from one another; and yet they
are venerable, and must not be told so, because they have authority and
power to justify what they do, and the law (that is, whatsoever they
please to call so) ready to give judgment for them. Who knows when a
physician cures or kills? And yet he is equally rewarded for both, and
the profession esteemed never the less worshipful; and therefore he
accounts it a ridiculous vanity in any man to consider whether he does
right or wrong in anything he attempts, since the success is only able
to determine and satisfy the opinion of the world which is the one and
which the other. As for those characters and marks of distinction which
religion, law, and morality fix upon both, they are only significant and
valid when their authority is able to command obedience and submission;
but when the greatness, numbers, or interest of those who are concerned
outgrows that, they change their natures, and that which was injury
before becomes justice, and justice injury. It is with crimes as with
inventions in the mechanics, that will frequently hold true to all
purposes of the design while they are tried in little, but when the
experiment is made in great prove false in all particulars to what is
promised in the model: so iniquities and vices may be punished and
corrected, like children, while they are little and impotent, but when
they are great and sturdy they become incorrigible and proof against all
the power of justice and authority.
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