INTRODUCTION TO THE THIRD BOOK,.
BY THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATOR.
Cicero here enters on the grand question of Political Justice, and endeavors to evince throughout the absolute verity of that inestimable proverb, "Honesty is the best policy," in all public as well as in all private affairs.

St.Augustine, in his City of God, has given the following analysis of this magnificent disquisition: "In the third book of Cicero's Commonwealth" (says he) "the question of Political Justice is most earnestly discussed.
Philus is appointed to support, as well as he can, the sophistical arguments of those who think that political government cannot be carried on without the aid of injustice and chicanery.

He denies holding any such opinion himself; yet, in order to exhibit the truth more vividly through the force of contrast, he pleads with the utmost ingenuity the cause of injustice against justice; and endeavors to show, by plausible examples and specious dialectics, that injustice is as useful to a statesman as justice would be injurious.

Then Laelius, at the general request, takes up the plea for justice, and maintains with all his eloquence that nothing could be so ruinous to states as injustice and dishonesty, and that without a supreme justice, no political government could expect a long duration.

This point being sufficiently proved, Scipio returns to the principal discussion.