By what means soever we may have the privilege to redress and reform it anew, we can hardly writhe it from its wonted bent, but we shall break all.  Solon being asked whether he had established the best laws he could for the Athenians; “Yes,” said he, “of those they would have received.”  Varro excuses himself after the same manner:  “that if he were to begin to write of religion, he would say what he believed; but seeing it was already received, he would write rather according to use than nature.”

Not according to opinion, but in truth and reality, the best and most excellent government for every nation is that under which it is maintained:  its form and essential convenience depend upon custom.  We are apt to be displeased at the present condition; but I, nevertheless, maintain that to desire command in a few—­[an oligarchy.]—­ in a republic, or another sort of government in monarchy than that already established, is both vice and folly: 

              “Ayme l’estat, tel que to le veois estre
               S’il est royal ayme la royaute;
               S’il est de peu, ou biers communaute,
               Ayme l’aussi; car Dieu t’y a faict naistre.”

["Love the government, such as you see it to be.  If it be royal,
love royalty; if it is a republic of any sort, still love it; for
God himself created thee therein.”]

So wrote the good Monsieur de Pibrac, whom we have lately lost, a man of so excellent a wit, such sound opinions, and such gentle manners.  This loss, and that at the same time we have had of Monsieur de Foix, are of so great importance to the crown, that I do not know whether there is another couple in France worthy to supply the places of these two Gascons in sincerity and wisdom in the council of our kings.  They were both variously great men, and certainly, according to the age, rare and great, each of them in his kind:  but what destiny was it that placed them in these times, men so remote from and so disproportioned to our corruption and intestine tumults?

Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation:  change only gives form to injustice and tyranny.  When any piece is loosened, it may be proper to stay it; one may take care that the alteration and corruption natural to all things do not carry us too far from our beginnings and principles:  but to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change the foundations of so vast a building, is for them to do, who to make clean, efface; who reform particular defects by an universal confusion, and cure diseases by death: 

      “Non tam commutandarum quam evertendarum rerum cupidi.”

     ["Not so desirous of changing as of overthrowing things.” 
     —­Cicero, De 0ffic., ii. i.]