He says, "They think the whole commonwealth ordained for raising them up, and accounting it their lawful gain to enrich themselves upon the losses of the rest of the people."
We are not to censure James I. for his principles of political economy, which then had not assumed the dignity of a science; his rude and simple ideas convey popular truths.
* * * * *
REGULATIONS FOR THE PRINCE'S MANNERS AND HABITS.
The last portion of the "Basilicon Doron" is devoted to domestic regulations for the prince, respecting his manners and habits; which the king calls "the indifferent actions of a man."
"A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures all the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in the discharge of his office, yet, if his behaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent actions, the people, who see but the outward part, conceive pre-occupied conceits of the king's inward intention, which, although with time, the trier of truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, yet interim patitur justus, and pre-judged conceits will, in the meantime, breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder. Besides," the king adds, "the indifferent actions and behaviour of a man have a certain holding and dependence upon vertue or vice, according as they are used or ruled."
The prince is not to keep regular hours,
"That any time in the four and twentie hours may be alike to you; thereby your diet may be accommodated to your affairs, and not your affairs to your diet."
The prince is to eat in public, "to shew that he loves not to haunt companie, which is one of the marks of a tyrant, and that he delights not to eat privatelie, ashamed of his gluttonie." As a curious instance of the manners of the times, the king advises the prince "to use mostly to eat of reasonablie-grosse and common-meats; not only for making your bodie strong for travel, as that ye may be the hartlier received by your meane subiects in their houses, when their cheere may suffice you, which otherwaies would be imputed to you for pride, and breed coldness and disdain in them."
I have noticed his counsel against the pedantry or other affectations of style in speaking.