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[101]
“But,” you will say, “it was foolish of him not
only not to advocate the exchange of prisoners but
even to plead against such action.”
How was it foolish? Was it so, even if his policy
was for the good of the state? Nay; can what is
inexpedient for the state be expedient for any individual citizen?
28. People overturn the fundamental principles 1 established by Nature, when they divorce
expediency from moral rectitude. For we all seek
to obtain what is to us expedient; we are irresistibly
drawn toward it, and we cannot possibly be otherwise. For who is there that would turn his back
upon what is to him expedient? Or rather, who is
there that does not exert himself to the utmost to
secure it? But because we cannot discover it anywhere except in good report, propriety, and moral
rectitude, we look upon these three for that reason
as the first and the highest objects of endeavour,
while what we term expediency we account not so
much an ornament to our dignity as a necessary
incident to living.
1 Expediency inseparable from moral rectitude.
M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis. With An English Translation. Walter Miller. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1913.
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