Cicero: “Justice totters or rather, I should say, lies already prostrate; so also with all those virtues which are discernible in…”

And it is a great man's duty in troublous times to single out the guilty for punishment, to spare the many, and in every turn of fortune to hold to a true and honourable course.

Accordingly, in encountering danger we should do as doctors do in their practice: in light cases of illness they give mild treatment; in cases of dangerous sickness they are compelled to apply hazardous and even desperate remedies.

But for all cases we have one rule, with which I desire you to be perfectly familiar: that which seems expedient must not be morally wrong; or, if it is morally wrong, it must not seem expedient.

So, then, it is truth that is, as it were, the stuff with which this virtue has to deal and on which it employs itself.