Kitap 3
34
However, he will be more favourable to the cultivators than he appears; for the same man who has announced in his edict that he will allow a trial against the collectors, in which they shall be liable to an eightfold penalty, had it also set down in his edict, that he would grant a similar trial against the cultivators, in which they should be liable to a fourfold penalty. Who now dares to say that this man was unfavourably disposed or hostile to the cultivators? How much more lenient is he to them than to the collectors? He has ordered in his edict that the Sicilian magistrate should exact from the cultivator whatever the collector declared ought to be paid to him. What sentence has he left behind, which can be pronounced against a cultivator of the soil It is not a bad thing, says he, for that fear to exist; so that, when the money has been exacted from the cultivator, still there will be behind a fear of the court of justice, to prevent him from stirring himself. If you wish to exact money from me by process of law, remove the Sicilian magistrate. If you employ this violence, what need is there of a process of law? Moreover, who will there be who would not prefer paying to your collectors what they demand, to being condemned in four times the amount by your attendants.
