[41]
With this I will close my discussion of the duties
connected with war.
But let us remember that we must have regard1
for justice even towards the humblest. Now the
humblest station and the poorest fortune are those
of slaves; and they give us no bad rule who bid us
treat our slaves as we should our employees: they
must be required to work; they must be given their
dues.
While wrong may be done, then, in either of two2
ways, that is, by force or by fraud, both are bestial:
fraud seems to belong to the cunning fox, force to
the lion; both are wholly unworthy of man, but
fraud is the more contemptible. But of all forms of
[p. 47]
injustice, none is more flagrant than that of the
hypocrite who, at the very moment when he is most
false, makes it his business to appear virtuous.
This must conclude our discussion of justice.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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