them have suffered as severely as those that first professed them.  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.

Among all his virtues there is none which he sets so high an esteem upon as impudence, which he finds more useful and necessary than a vizard is to a highwayman; for he that has but a competent stock of this natural endowment has an interest in any man he pleases, and is able to manage it with greater advantages than those who have all the real pretences imaginable, but want that dexterous way of soliciting by which, if the worst fall out, he is sure to lose nothing if he does not win.  He that is impudent is shot-free, and if he be ever so much overpowered can receive no hurt, for his forehead is impenetrable, and of so excellent a temper that nothing is able to touch it, but turns edge and is blunted.  His face holds no correspondence with his mind, and therefore whatsoever inward sense or conviction he feels, there is no outward appearance of it in his looks to give evidence against him; and in any difficulty that can befall him, impudence is the most infallible expedient to fetch him off, that is always ready, like his angel guardian, to relieve