Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's note
- Introduction
- Principal events in Bacon's life
- Select bibliography
- The History of the Reign of King Henry VII
- Fragmentary histories
- From the Essays (1625)
- Of Simulation and Dissimulation
- Of Seditions and Troubles
- Of Empire
- Of Counsel
- Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
- Glossary
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Of Counsel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's note
- Introduction
- Principal events in Bacon's life
- Select bibliography
- The History of the Reign of King Henry VII
- Fragmentary histories
- From the Essays (1625)
- Of Simulation and Dissimulation
- Of Seditions and Troubles
- Of Empire
- Of Counsel
- Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
- Glossary
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Summary
The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving counsel. For in other confidences men commit the parts of life; their lands, their goods, their child, their credit, some particular affair; but to such as they make their counsellors, they commit the whole: by how much the more they are obliged to all faith and integrity. The wisest princes need not think it any diminution to their greatness, or derogation* to their sufficiency,* to rely upon counsel. God himself is not without, but hath made it one of the great names* of his blessed Son; The Counsellor. Salomon hath pronounced that ‘in counsel is stability’. Things will have their first or second agitation:* if they be not tossed upon the arguments of counsel, they will be tossed upon the waves of fortune; and be full of inconstancy, doing and undoing, like the reeling* of a drunken man. Salomon's son found the force of counsel, as his father saw the necessity of it. For the beloved kingdom of God was first rent and broken by ill counsel;* upon which counsel there are set for our instruction the two marks whereby bad counsel is for ever best discerned; that it was young counsel, for the persons; and violent counsel, for the matter.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998