are the same with the virtues and defects intellectual: and to the person of a commonwealth, his counsellors serve him in the place of memory and mental discourse. But with this resemblance of the commonwealth to a natural man, there is one dissimilitude joined of great importance; which is, that a natural man receiveth his experience from the natural objects of sense, which work upon him without passion or interest of their own; whereas they that give counsel to the representative person of a commonwealth may have, and have often their particular ends and passions, that render their counsels always suspected, and many times unfaithful. And therefore we may set down for the first condition of a good counsellor, “that his ends and interests be not inconsistent with the ends and interests of him he counselleth.”
Secondly, because the office of a counsellor, when an action comes into deliberation, is to make manifest the consequences of it, in such manner as he that is counselled may be truly and evidently informed; he ought to propound his advice in such form of speech as may make the truth most evidently appear; that is to say, with as firm ratiocination, as significant and proper language, and as briefly as the evidence will permit. And therefore “rash and unevident inferences,” such as are fetched only from examples or authority of books, and are not arguments of what is good or evil, but witnesses of fact or of opinion; “obscure, confused, and ambiguous expressions, also all metaphorical speeches, tending to the stirring up of passions,” (because such reasoning and such expressions are useful only to deceive, or to lead him we counsel towards other ends than his own,) “are repugnant to the office of a counsellor.”
Thirdly, because the ability of counselling proceedeth from experience and long study; and no man is presumed to have experience in all those things that to the administration of a great commonwealth are necessary to be known, “no man is presumed to be a good counsellor, but in such business as he hath not only been much versed in, but hath also much meditated on, and considered.” For seeing the business of a