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Great

is seldom one in which a man should tell it all. skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to

stop.

Ceremony is necessary in courts, as the outwork and defence of manners.

Flattery, though a base coin, is the necessary pocket-money at court; where, by custom and consent, it has obtained such a currency, that it is no longer a fraudulent, but a legal payment.

If a minister refuses you a reasonable request, and either slights or injures you; if you have not the power to gratify your resentment, have the wisdom to conceal and dissemble it. Seeming good humour on your part may prevent rancour on his, and perhaps bring things right again: but if you have the power to hurt, hint modestly, that if provoked, you may possibly have the will too. Fear, when real, and well founded, is perhaps a more prevailing motive at courts than love.

At court, many more people can hurt, than can help you; please the former, but engage the latter.

Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.

A man's own good breeding is his best security against other people's ill manners.

Good breeding carries along with it a dignity, that is respected by the most petulant. Ill breeding invites and authorizes the familiarity of the most timid. No man ever said a pert thing to the Duke of Marlborough. No man ever said a civil one (though many a flattering one) to Sir Robert Walpole.

When the old clipped money was called in for a new coinage in King William's time; to prevent the

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like for the future, they stamped on the edges of the crown pieces these words, et decus et tutamen. That is exactly the case of good breeding.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments only give lustre; and many more people see than weigh.

Most arts require long study and application; but the most useful art of all, that of pleasing, requires only the desire.

It is to be presumed, that a man of common sense, who does not desire to please, desires nothing at all; since he must know that he cannot obtain anything without it.

A skilful negotiator will most carefully distinguish between the little and the great objects of his business, and will be as frank and open in the former, as he will be secret and pertinacious in the latter.

He will, by his manners and address, endeavour, at least, to make his public adversaries his personal friends. He will flatter and engage the man, while he counterworks the minister; and he will never alienate people's minds from him, by wrangling for points, either absolutely unattainable, or not worth attaining. He will make even a merit of giving up, what he could not or would not carry, and sell a trifle for a thousand times its value.

A foreign minister, who is concerned in great affairs, must necessarily have spies in his pay; but he must not too easily credit their informations, which are never exactly true, often very false. His best spies will always be those whom he does not pay, but whom he has engaged in his service by his dexterity and address, and who think themselves nothing less than spies.

There is a certain jargon, which, in French, I should call un persiflage d'affaires, that a foreign minister ought to be perfectly master of, and may use very advantageously at great entertainments in mixed companies, and in all occasions where he must speak, and should say nothing. Well turned and well spoken, it seems to mean something though in truth it means nothing. It is a kind of political badinage, which prevents or removes a thousand difficulties, to which a foreign minister is exposed in mixed conversations.

If ever the volto sciolto and the pensieri stretti are necessary, they are so in these affairs. A grave, dark, reserved, and mysterious air has foenum in cornu. An even, easy, unembarrassed one invites confidence, and leaves no room for guesses and conjectures.

Both simulation and dissimulation are absolutely necessary for a foreign minister; and yet they must stop short of falsehood and perfidy: that middle point is the difficult one: there ability consists. He must often seem pleased, when he is vexed; and grave, when he is pleased; but he must never say either that would be falsehood, an indelible stain to character.

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A foreign minister should be a most exact economist; an expense proportioned to his appointments and fortune is necessary: but, on the other hand debt is inevitable ruin to him. It sinks him into disgrace at the court where he resides, and into the most servile and abject dependence on the court that sent him. As he cannot resent ill usage, he is sure

to have enough of it.

The Duc de Sully observes very justly, in his

Memoirs, that nothing contributed more to his rise, than that prudent economy which he had observed from his youth; and by which he had always a sum of money beforehand, in case of emergencies.

It is very difficult to fix the particular point of economy; the best error of the two is on the parsimonious side. That may be corrected, the other cannot.

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The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man's general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous: so that the difference of those two opposite characters turns upon one shilling. A man's character, in that particular, depends a great deal upon the report of his own servants; a mere trifle above common wages makes their report favourable.

Take care always to form your establishment so much within your income, as to leave a sufficient fund for unexpected contingencies, and a prudent liberality. There is hardly a year, in any man's life, in which a small sum of ready money may not be employed to great advantage.'

Upon the back of the original is written, in Mr. Stanhope's hand, "Excellent Maxims, but more calculated for the meridian of France or Spain, than of England."

POLITICAL MAXIMS FROM CARDINAL

DE RETZ.

1.

T is often madness to engage in a conspiracy; but nothing is so effectual to bring people afterwards to their senses, at least for a time. As in such undertakings, the danger subsists, even after the business is over; this obliges to be prudent and circumspect in the succeeding moments.

2. A middling understanding, being susceptible of unjust suspicions, is consequently, of all characters, the least fit to head a faction. As the most indispensable qualification in such a chief is, to suppress, in many occasions, and to conceal in all, even the best grounded suspicions.

3. Nothing animates and gives strength to a commotion, so much as the ridicule of him against whom it is raised.

4. Among people used to affairs of moment, secrecy is much less uncommon than is generally believed.

5. Descending to the little is the surest way of attaining to an equality with the great.

6. Fashion, though powerful in all things, is not more so in any, than in being well or ill at court. There are times, when disgrace is a kind of fire, that purifies all bad qualities, and illuminates every good one. There are others, in which the being out of favour is unbecoming a man of character.

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