XXXV CONCERNING FAILURE OF CROPS AND DEARTH IN MORALS AND GOVERNMENT
Laurence Marcellus Larson translation
Son. It is a fact that I have met some who, though they came from court, either concealed the sort of manners that you have now discussed, if they knew them, or had, as I remarked, never gained insight into such matters. Now it is not strange that those who remain at home in ignorance or are not of an inquiring mind know little or nothing about such things; but it is more to be wondered at, as you have just said, that many remain a long time with the king and close to him in service, and still do not learn either what courtesy means or what courtly manners are. Therefore, since you have warned me to beware of such ignorance, I want to ask you how this can be and how a king who is well-bred and courteous can be willing to keep men about his person to serve him, who refuse to live according to good manners. For I have thought that, if a king is courteous and refined, all would imitate him in decorum, and that he would not care much for churlish men.
Father. It may happen sometimes that a husbandman who is accustomed to eat good bread and clean food has to mix chaff or bran with his flour so as to make his bread and that of his household last longer than common; and at such times he must, though reluctant, partake of such food as is set before him in the same thankful spirit as earlier, when he was given good and clean food; and such cases result from grinding necessity, that is, from crop failures. But scarcity arises in 194many ways. Sometimes there is dearth of grain, even when the earth continues to yield grass and straw, though at times it gives neither. There are times, too, when the earth gives good and sufficient fruitage, and yet no one is profited, for dearth is in the air, and bad weather ruins the crops at harvest time. Sometimes smut[246] causes trouble, though the crop is plentiful and the weather good. It can also happen at times that all vegetation flourishes at its best, and there is no dearth; and yet there may be great scarcity on some man’s farm or among his cattle, or in the ocean, or in the fresh waters, or in the hunting forests. Sometimes when everything goes wrong, it may even come to pass that all these failures occur together; and then bran will be as dear among men as clean flour was earlier, when times were good, or even dearer than that. All these forms of dearth which I have now recounted must be regarded as great calamities in every land where they occur; and it would mean almost complete ruin if they should all appear at the same time and continue for a period of three years.
There remains another kind of dearth which alone is more distressing than all those which I have enumerated: dearth may come upon the people who inhabit the land, or, what is worse, there may come failure in the morals, the intelligence, or the counsels of those who are to govern the land. For something can be done to help a country where there is famine, if capable men are in control and there is prosperity in the neighboring lands. But if dearth comes upon the people or the morals 195of the nation, far greater misfortunes will arise. For one cannot buy from other countries with money either morals or insight, if what was formerly in the land should be lost or destroyed. But even though there be failure of harvest on a peasant’s farm, which has always been good and which he and his kinsmen before him have owned a long time, he will not take such an angry dislike to it that, caring no longer what becomes of it, he will proceed forthwith to dispose of it; much rather will he plan to garner and store grass and chaff as carefully as he once garnered good and clean grain, or even more so, and in this way provide for his household as best he can, until God wills that times shall improve. In this way, too, a king must act, if he should suffer the misfortune of dearth upon the morals or the intelligence of his realm: he must not renounce the kingdom, but necessity may force him to rate the men of little wit as high as the wise were rated earlier while the kingdom stood highest in prosperity and morals. Sometimes punishment will serve and sometimes prayer; something may also be gained through instruction; but the land must be maintained in every way possible until God wills that times shall improve.