354 OF A DIGEST OF LAWS. 



upon their own necks after their death. Nay, they 

 may make Nabuchodonozor s image of monarchy 

 golden from head to foot. And if any of the meaner 

 sort of politics, that are sighted only to see the 

 worst of things, think, that laws are but cobwebs, 

 and that good princes will do well without them, 

 and bad will not stand much upon them ; the dis 

 course is neither good nor wise. For certain it is, 

 that good laws are some bridle to bad princes, and 

 as a very wall about government. And if tyrants 

 sometimes make a breach into them, yet they mollify 

 even tyranny itself, as Solon s laws did the tyranny 

 of Pisistratus : and then commonly they get up 

 again, upon the first advantage of better times. 

 Other means to perpetuate the memory and merits 

 of sovereign princes are inferior to this. Buildings 

 of temples, tombs, palaces, theatres, and the like, are 

 honourable things, and look big upon posterity : but 

 Constantine the Great gave the name well to those 

 works, when he used to call Trajan, that was a great 

 builder, Parietaria, wall-flower, because his name 

 was upon so many walls : so if that be the matter, 

 that a king would turn wall-flower, or pellitory of 

 the wall, with cost he may. Adrian s vein was better, 

 for his mind was to wrestle a fall with time ; and 

 being a great progressor through all the Roman 

 empire, whenever he found any decays of bridges, or 

 highways, or cuts of rivers and sewers, or walls, or 

 banks, or the like, he gave substantial order for their 

 repair with the better. He gave also multitudes of 

 charters and liberties for the comfort of corporations 



