Many ill matters and projects are undertaken; and private suits do
putrefy the public good. Many good matters are undertaken with bad
minds; I mean not only corrupt minds, but crafty minds, that intend not
performance. Some embrace suits, which never mean to deal effectually
in them; but if they see there may be life in the matter, by some other
mean they will be content to win a thank, or take a second reward, or,
at least, to make use, in the mean time, of the suitor’s hopes. Some
take hold of suits only for an occasion to cross some other, or to make
an information, whereof they could not otherwise have apt pretext,
without care what become of the suit when that turn is served; or,
generally, to make other men’s business a kind of entertainment to
bring in their own: nay, some undertake suits with a full purpose to
let them fall, to the end to gratify the adverse party, or competitor.
Surely, there is in some sort a right in every suit; either a right of
equity, if it be a suit of controversy, or a right of desert, if it be
a suit of petition. If affection lead a man to favor the wrong side
in justice, let him rather use his countenance to compound the matter
than to carry it. If affection lead a man to favor the less worthy in
desert, let him do it without depraving[500] or disabling the better
deserver. In suits which a man doth not well understand, it is good
to refer them to some friend of trust and judgment, that may report
whether he may deal in them with honor; but let him choose well his
referendaries,[501] for else he may be led by the nose. Suitors are so
distasted[502] with delays and abuses, that plain dealing in denying to
deal in suits at first, and reporting the success barely,[503] and in
challenging no more thanks than one hath deserved, is grown not only
honorable, but also gracious. In suits of favor, the first coming ought
to take little place;[504] so far forth[505] consideration may be had
of his trust, that if intelligence of the matter could not otherwise
have been had but by him, advantage be not taken of the note,[506] but
the party left to his other means, and in some sort recompensed for his
discovery. To be ignorant of the value of a suit is simplicity; as well
as to be ignorant of the right thereof, is want of conscience. Secrecy
in suits is a great mean of obtaining; for voicing them to be in
forwardness may discourage some kind of suitors, but doth quicken and
awake others. But timing of the suit is the principal; timing, I say,
not only in respect of the person that should grant it, but in respect
of those which are like to cross it. Let a man, in the choice of his
mean, rather choose the fittest mean, than the greatest mean; and
rather them that deal in certain things, than those that are general.
The reparation of a denial is sometimes equal to the first grant, if
a man show himself neither dejected nor discontented. “Iniquum petas,
ut æquum feras,”[507] is a good rule, where a man hath strength of
favor; but otherwise a man were better rise in his suit; for he that
would have ventured at first to have lost the suitor, will not, in the
conclusion, lose both the suitor and his own former favor. Nothing is
thought so easy a request to a great person as his letter: and yet if
it be not in a good cause, it is so much out of his reputation. There
are no worse instruments than these general contrivers of suits; for
they are but a kind of poison and infection to public proceedings.