Page:History of Freedom.djvu/269

 INTRODUCTION TO IL PRINCIPE 225

(j'entends une puissance longue et durable) c'est blas- phémer l'humanité." This primitive and everlasting problem assumed a peculiar shape in theological controversy. The Catholic divines urged that prosperity is a sign by which, even in the militant period, the true Church may be known; cou pIing Felicitas Temþoralis z'llz"s collata quz: ecclesial1t difenderullt \vith Infi:lz"z exitus eorU111 qui ecclesiam oþþugnant. Le Blanc de Beaulieu, a name famous in the history of pacific disputation, holds the opposite opinion: "Crucem et perpessiones esse potius ecclesiae notam, nam denunciatum piis in verbo Dei fore ut in hoc mundo persecution em patiantur, non vero ut armis sint adversariis suis superiores." Renan, outbidding all, finds that honesty is the worst policy: "En général, dans l'histoire, l'homme est puni de ce qu'il fait de bien, et récompensé de ce qu'il fait de mal.-L'histoire est tout Ie contraire de Ia vertu récom pensée. JJ The national movement which united, first Italy and then Germany, opened a new era for Machiavelli. He had come down, laden with the distinctive reproach of abetting despotism; and the men who, in the seventeenth century, levelled the course of absolute monarchy, were commonly known as novi þolitici et M aC/liavelli'stae. In the days of Grotius they are denounced by Besold: "Novi politici, ex Italia redeuntes qui quavis fraude principibus a subditis pecuniam extorquere fas licitumque esse putant, Machiavelli plerumque praeceptis et exemplis principum, quorum rationes non capiunt, ad id abutentes." But the immediate purpose with which Italians and Germans effected the great change in the European constitution was unity, not liberty. They constt ucted, not securities, but forces. Machiavelli's time had come. The problems once more were his own: and in many forward and resolute minds the spirit also was his, and displayed itself in an ascending scale of praise. He was simply a faithful observer of facts, who described the fell necessity that governs narrow territories and unstable fortunes; he discovered the true line of progress and the law of future Q