ChapterTwoBookOne57

It is, however, no small thing to perfect this harmony and this bond of interests that make a state beautiful and to prevent them from ever being broken. Men[^1] have worked on this with great care in all states since the beginning of the world. The ideas that the ancients left us of their different ways of governing make sufficiently known to us that they all wanted to achieve this, and that they only sought, through this large number of laws and very wise institutions, to do (219) as much as was possible for the different interests of individuals to unite in the common interest of the state and all of society and for the blindness, the hastiness, and the misunderstanding of some citizens not to crush the rest and reduce or stop public opulence and, in the end, make them all perish together.

But far from succeeding in their wish, they left some work for posterity because of the flaws that still exist everywhere and are not due to the lack of good laws, but rather to the lack of execution and our neglect of a very useful and very necessary maxim for a state: _Quod saepe boni mores plus valeant quam bonae leges_[^2], that is to say, good examples and (220) good morals are often worth more than good laws. It is an incontestable truth that men allow themselves to be lead and corrected more easily by showing them their true interests, by the examples of respectable persons, and by the instruction from their fathers, mothers, relatives, friends, and tutors than by laws whose reasons are unknown to them and which make no other impression on their minds and their wills than the fear of remote harm from which they know how to protect themselves in several ways: they are more on guard against performing a deed that would make them lose the esteem and the friendship of all those they cherish the most and from which the damage would be inevitable. (221)