The most common security I take of my people is ignorance; I never presume any to be vicious till I have first found them so; and repose the most confidence in the younger sort, that I think are least spoiled by ill example.  I had rather be told at two months’ end that I have spent four hundred crowns, than to have my ears battered every night with three, five, seven:  and I have been, in this way, as little robbed as another.  It is true, I am willing enough not to see it; I, in some sort, purposely, harbour a kind of perplexed, uncertain knowledge of my money:  up to a certain point, I am content to doubt.  One must leave a little room for the infidelity or indiscretion of a servant; if you have left enough, in gross, to do your business, let the overplus of Fortune’s liberality run a little more freely at her mercy; ’tis the gleaner’s portion.  After all, I do not so much value the fidelity of my people as I contemn their injury.  What a mean and ridiculous thing it is for a man to study his money, to delight in handling and telling it over and over again!  ’Tis by this avarice makes its approaches.

In eighteen years that I have had my estate in my, own hands, I could never prevail with myself either to read over my deeds or examine my principal affairs, which ought, of necessity, to pass under my knowledge and inspection.  ’Tis not a philosophical disdain of worldly and transitory things; my taste is not purified to that degree, and I value them at as great a rate, at least, as they are worth; but ’tis, in truth, an inexcusable and childish laziness and negligence.  What would I not rather do than read a contract? or than, as a slave to my own business, tumble over those dusty writings? or, which is worse, those of another man, as so many do nowadays, to get money?  I grudge nothing but care and trouble, and endeavour nothing so much, as to be careless and at ease.  I had been much fitter, I believe, could it have been without obligation and servitude, to have lived upon another man’s fortune than my own:  and, indeed, I do not know, when I examine it nearer, whether, according to my humour, what I have to suffer from my affairs and servants, has not in it something more abject, troublesome, and tormenting than there would be in serving a man better born than myself, who would govern me with a gentle rein, and a little at my own case: 

          “Servitus obedientia est fracti animi et abjecti,
          arbitrio carentis suo.”

     ["Servitude is the obedience of a subdued and abject mind, wanting
     its own free will.”—­Cicero, Paradox, V. I.]

Crates did worse, who threw himself into the liberty of poverty, only to rid himself of the inconveniences and cares of his house.  This is what I would not do; I hate poverty equally with pain; but I could be content to change the kind of life I live for another that was humbler and less chargeable.