On the contrary, he loves, ordinarily, to live in peace and quietness, to till his lands and tend his flocks, and to enjoy the blessings of peace and repose.

It is comparatively but a small number in any age of the world, and in any nation, whose passions of ambition, hatred, or revenge become so strong as that they love bloodshed and war.

But these few, when they once get weapons into their hands, trample recklessly and mercilessly upon the rest.

One ferocious human tiger, with a spear or a bayonet to brandish, will tyrannize as he pleases over a hundred quiet men, who are armed only with shepherds' crooks, and whose only desire is to live in peace with their wives and their children.
[Sidenote: Husbandmen.] [Sidenote: How the Roman edifices were built.] [Sidenote: Standing armies.] Thus, while Marius and Sylla, with some hundred thousand armed and reckless followers, were carrying terror and dismay wherever they went, there were many millions of herdsmen and husbandmen in the Roman world who were dwelling in all the peace and quietness they could command, improving with their peaceful industry every acre where corn would ripen or grass grow.

It was by taxing and plundering the proceeds of this industry that the generals and soldiers, the consuls and praetors, and proconsuls and propraetors, filled their treasuries, and fed their troops, and paid the artisans for fabricating their arms.