“It is an excellent achievement also to render private disputes as few as possible and their settlement as rapid as may be.  But it is best of all to cut short the impetuosity of communities, and, if under guise of some appeals to your sovereignty and safety and good fortune they undertake to use force upon anybody or to undertake exploits or expenditures that are beyond their power, not to permit it.  You should abolish altogether their enmities and rivalries among themselves and not authorize them to create any empty titles or anything else which will breed differences between them.  All will readily obey you both in this and in every other matter, private and public, if you never permit any one to transgress this rule.  Non-enforcement of laws makes null and void even wisely framed precepts.  Consequently you should not allow persons to ask for what you are not accustomed to give.  Try to compel them to avoid diligently this very practice of petitioning for something prohibited.  This is what I have to say on that subject.

[-38-] “I advise you never to make use of your authority against all the citizens at once nor to deem it in any way curtailed if you do not do absolutely everything that is within your power.  But in proportion as you are able to carry out all your wishes, you must be anxious to wish only what is proper, make always a self-examination, to see whether what you are doing is right or not, what conduct will cause people to love you, and what not, in order that you may perform the one set of acts and avoid the other.  Do not admit the thought that you will sufficiently escape the reputation of acting contrary to this rule, if only you hear no one censuring you; and do not look for any one to be so mad as to reproach you openly for anything.  No one would do this, not even if he should be violently wronged.  Quite the reverse,—­many are compelled in public to praise their oppressors, and while engaged in opposition not to manifest their wrath.  The ruler must infer the disposition of people not from what they say but from the way it is natural for them to feel.

[-39-] “This and a similar policy is the one I wish you to pursue.  I pass over many matters because it is not feasible to speak of them all at one time and within present limits.  One suggestion therefore I will make to sum up both previous remarks and whatever is lacking.  If you yourself by your own motion do whatever you would wish some one else who ruled you to do, you will make no mistakes and will be always successful, and consequently your life will be most pleasant and free from danger.  How can all fail to regard you and to love you as father and preserver, when they see you are orderly, leading a good life, good at warfare, but a man of peace:  when you are not wanton, do not defraud:  when you meet them on a footing of equality, and do not yourself grow rich while demanding money from others:  are not yourself given to luxury while imposing hardships