On these grounds Machiavelli, in pleading for the liberation of Italy from her “barbarian” invaders, addressed a prince; the work of regeneration could logically be entrusted only to an armed despot. It remained to investigate the methods to be employed, and to consider what manner of man the reformer should be. The general principle enforced was that all reform must be retrograde, in the sense that it must bring back the State to its original condition, restoring the old ἦθος and looking for the ideal in the past. “It is a certain truth that all things in the world have a limit to their existence; but those run the full course that Heaven has in a general way assigned them, which do not disorder their constitution, but maintain it so ordered that it either does not alter, or, if it alters, the change is for its advantage, not to its detriment....Those alterations are salutary, which bring States back towards their first beginnings. Those States, consequently, are best-ordered and longest-lived, which by means of their institutions can be often renewed, or else, apart from their institutions, may be renewed by some accident. And it is clearer than the day that, if these bodies are not renewed, they will not last. The way to renew them is, as has been said, to bring them back to their beginnings, because all the beginnings of republics and kingdoms must contain in themselves some excellence, by means of which they obtain their first reputation and make their first growth. And as in the progress of time this excellence becomes corrupted, unless something intervenes which restores it to its primary condition, these bodies are necessarily destroyed.”
Such is the general rule for the guidance of a reformer. As isolation would involve failure, he must, in order to realise his object, make it his first business to secure the favour of the people. However difficult this might be, without some measure of popularity success would be an impossibility. “I reckon unhappy those princes who, to secure their State, are obliged to employ extraordinary methods, having the many for their enemies; for he who has the few for his enemies, readily and without serious difficulties secures himself; but he who has for enemy the whole people never secures himself, and, the more cruel he is, the weaker his rule becomes. So the best remedy within his reach is to try to make friends with the people.” To win popularity and yet to conduct a thorough reform might seem hopeless; but Machiavelli found a solution of the difficulty in the blind ignorance of the people, who may easily be deluded by the appearances of liberty. “He who desires or intends to reform the government of a city must, if this reform is to be accepted and carried on with general approval, retain at least the semblance of the ancient methods, lest it should appear to the people that their constitution has changed, although in reality the new institutions are entirely different from the old; for the mass of mankind is fed with appearances as much as with realities; indeed, men are frequently more stirred by what seems than by what is.” Populus vult decipi et decipiatur. There will, of course, be some few men who cannot be cheated; the new prince must not hesitate to kill them. “When men individually, or a whole city together offend against the State, a prince for a warning to others and for his own safety has no other remedy than to exterminate them; for the prince, who fails to chastise an offender so that he cannot offend any more, is reckoned an ignoramus or a coward.” Elsewhere the language is even more explicit: “he who is dead cannot think about revenging himself.” But such violence would only be necessary in the early stages of a reformer’s career, and a wise prince will so manage that the odium shall fall on his subordinates; he may thus secure a reputation for clemency, and in any case all cruelty must be finished at one stroke, and not subsequently repeated at intervals. Such a course would be less obnoxious than to confiscate property, for men would sooner lose their relatives than forfeit their money. Dead friends may sometimes be forgotten; the memory of lost possessions always survives.
It is clear that the task of a reformer, as Machiavelli understood it, would require a very unusual combination of gifts and qualities. It appeared unlikely that any one could be found with the ability and the will to act without reference to traditional standards, and without concession to the ordinary feelings of humanity. Machiavelli was not blind to the difficulties of the case. It had, first, a moral and an emotional side. Whoever was to accomplish the salvation of Italy must be ready to sacrifice his private convictions and to ignore the rights of conscience. The methods which Machiavelli advocated were, he readily admitted, opposed to the life of a Christian, perhaps even to the life of a human being. Were the morally good to be set side by side with the morally evil, no one would ever be so mad or so wicked, that if asked to choose between the two, he would not praise that which deserved praise and blame that which deserved blame. Machiavelli recognised with regret that “it very seldom happens that a good man is willing to become prince by bad means, though his object be good.” The desire for posthumous fame and the knowledge that a retrospective judgment would approve were powerful inducements, but, after all, something weightier was required. Machiavelli was prepared to be logical. An extraordinary problem cannot be solved by a tender conscience; “honest slaves are always slaves, and good men are always paupers.” Deceit and cruelty and any other instrument of empire, if they led to success, would be understood and forgiven; “those who conquer, in whatever way they conquer, never reap disgrace.” Success became the solvent of moral distinctions, and judgment must follow results. And in the particular case of Italy, a further sanction for the reformer’s acts might perhaps be found in the desperate condition of the country, and in the high end in view: “where the bare salvation of the motherland is at stake, there no consideration of justice or injustice can find a place, nor any of mercy and cruelty, or of honour and disgrace; every scruple must be set aside, and that plan followed which saves her life and maintains her liberty.”
Supposing any one prepared to accept this solution of the intellectual difficulties, it remained doubtful whether a man could be found with the practical ability and steadiness of nerve necessary to accomplish Machiavelli’s design. He was sometimes sanguine, but at other times ready to despair. The condition of success would be thoroughness, and in the history of Rome he found evidences that men may, though rarely, avoid half-measures, and “have recourse to extremities.” He knew that to halt between two opinions was always fatal, and that it was moreover not only undesirable, but impossible, to follow a middle course continuously. Unfortunately, human nature is apt to recoil from the extreme of evil and to fall short of the ideal of good; “men know not how to be gloriously wicked or perfectly good; and, when a crime has somewhat of grandeur and nobility in it, they flinch.” Yet a great crisis often brings to the front a great man, and in 1513 Machiavelli believed the moment had come: “this opportunity must not be allowed to slip by, in order that Italy may at last see her redeemer appear.” The right man was, he believed, a Medici, who, with far greater resources, might succeed where a Borgia had failed. His example was Cesare Borgia, who at the time had alone in any sort attempted the work of consolidation, and while shrinking from no convenient crime had damned himself intelligently.
The Prince was not published in Machiavelli’s lifetime, was almost certainly never presented either to Giuliano or to Lorenzo de’ Medici, and as a practical manifesto with a special purpose in view had no influence whatever. But the book summed up and interpreted the converging temper of political thought, and found an echo in the minds of many generations. When The Discourses were known only to political theorists, when The Florentine Histories were read only by students, and The Art of War had become extinct, The Prince still continued to find a ready welcome from men immersed in the practical business of government. Later thinkers carried on the lines of reasoning suggested by Machiavelli, and reached conclusions from which he refrained. At last it became clear, that the problems associated with Machiavelli’s name were in fact primitive problems, arising inexorably from the conditions of all human societies. They form part of larger questions, in which they become insensibly merged. When the exact place of Machiavelli in history has been defined, the issues which he raised will still subsist. The difficulties can only ultimately disappear, when the progress of thought has determined in some final and conclusive form the necessary relations of all men to one another and to God.
CHAPTER VII. ROME AND THE TEMPORAL POWER, by Richard Garnett
WE are to describe the consolidation, at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth