Though I had fully made up my mind that you would do nothing rashly,
nothing imprudently, still I was so far impressed by the rumors in some
quarters as to think it my duty to write to you, and ask it as a favor
due to our mutual regard that you will not take any step, now that the
scale is so decisively turned, which you would not have thought it
necessary to take even though the balance still stood firm. For it will
really be both a heavier blow to our friendship, and a step on your part
still less judicious for yourself, if you are to be thought not even to
have bowed the knee to success--for things seem to have fallen out as
entirely favorably for us as disastrously for them; nor yet to have been
drawn by attachment to a particular cause--for that has undergone no
change since you decided to remain aloof from their counsels;--but to
have passed a stern judgment on some act of mine, than which, from you,
no more painful thing could befall me; and I claim the right of our
friendship to entreat that you will not take this course.
Finally, what more suitable part is there for a good peace-loving man,
and a good citizen, than to keep aloof from civil dissensions? There
were not a few who admired this course, but could not adopt it by reason
of its danger: you, after having duly weighed both the conclusions of
friendship and the unmistakable evidence of my whole life, will find
that there is no safer nor more honorable course than to keep entirely
aloof from the struggle.