The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: complete and permanent order.
Egmont. You, my lord, should know better than I, that tranquillity is
already sufficiently restored, and was still more so, till the appearance of
fresh troops again agitated the public mind, and filled it anew with anxiety
and alarm.
Alva. You seem to intimate that it would have been more advisable if the
king had not placed me in a position to interrogate you.
Egmont. Pardon me! It is not for me to determine whether the king acted
advisedly in sending the army hither, whether the might of his royal
presence alone would not have operated more powerfully. The army is
here, the king is not. But we should be most ungrateful were we to forget
 Egmont |