A prince, when by some urgent circumstance or some impetuous and unforeseen accident that very much concerns his state, compelled to forfeit his word and break his faith, or otherwise forced from his ordinary duty, ought to attribute this necessity to a lash of the divine rod:  vice it is not, for he has given up his own reason to a more universal and more powerful reason; but certainly ’tis a misfortune:  so that if any one should ask me what remedy?  “None,” say I, “if he were really racked between these two extremes:  ’sed videat, ne quoeratur latebya perjurio’, he must do it:  but if he did it without regret, if it did not weigh on him to do it, ’tis a sign his conscience is in a sorry condition.”  If there be a person to be found of so tender a conscience as to think no cure whatever worth so important a remedy, I shall like him never the worse; he could not more excusably or more decently perish.  We cannot do all we would, so that we must often, as the last anchorage, commit the protection of our vessels to the simple conduct of heaven.  To what more just necessity does he reserve himself?  What is less possible for him to do than what he cannot do but at the expense of his faith and honour, things that, perhaps, ought to be dearer to him than his own safety, or even the safety of his people.  Though he should, with folded arms, only call God to his assistance, has he not reason to hope that the divine goodness will not refuse the favour of an extraordinary arm to just and pure hands?  These are dangerous examples, rare and sickly exceptions to our natural rules:  we must yield to them, but with great moderation and circumspection:  no private utility is of such importance that we should upon that account strain our consciences to such a degree:  the public may be, when very manifest and of very great concern.

Timoleon made a timely expiation for his strange exploit by the tears he shed, calling to mind that it was with a fraternal hand that he had slain the tyrant; and it justly pricked his conscience that he had been necessitated to purchase the public utility at so great a price as the violation of his private morality.  Even the Senate itself, by his means delivered from slavery, durst not positively determine of so high a fact, and divided into two so important and contrary aspects; but the Syracusans, sending at the same time to the Corinthians to solicit their protection, and to require of them a captain fit to re-establish their city in its former dignity and to clear Sicily of several little tyrants by whom it was oppressed, they deputed Timoleon for that service, with this cunning declaration; “that according as he should behave himself well or ill in his employment, their sentence should incline either to favour the deliverer of his country, or to disfavour the murderer of his brother.”  This fantastic conclusion carries along with it some excuse, by reason of the danger of the example, and the importance of so strange an