and if it be conferred without due respect of merit, it puts him out of
countenance who receives it, and is received ungraciously. Tyrants have
been sacrificed to the hatred of the people by the hands of those very
men they have unjustly advanced; such kind of men as buffoons, panders,
fiddlers, and such ragamuffins, thinking to assure to themselves the
possession of benefits unduly received, if they manifest to have him in
hatred and disdain of whom they hold them, and in this associate
themselves to the common judgment and opinion.

The subjects of a prince excessive in gifts grow excessive in asking,
and regulate their demands, not by reason, but by example. We have,
seriously, very often reason to blush at our own impudence: we are
over-paid, according to justice, when the recompense equals our service;
for do we owe nothing of natural obligation to our princes? If he bear
our charges, he does too much; 'tis enough that he contribute to them:
the overplus is called benefit, which cannot be exacted: for the very
name Liberality sounds of Liberty.

In our fashion it is never done; we never reckon what we have received;
we are only for the future liberality; wherefore, the more a prince
exhausts himself in giving, the poorer he grows in friends. How should
he satisfy immoderate desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled?
He who has his thoughts upon taking, never thinks of what he has taken;
covetousness has nothing so properly and so much its own as ingratitude.

The example of Cyrus will not do amiss in this place, to serve the kings
of these times for a touchstone to know whether their gifts are well or
ill bestowed, and to see how much better that emperor conferred them than
they do, by which means they are reduced to borrow of unknown subjects,
and rather of them whom they have wronged than of them on whom they have