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Rh en sa liberté, il faut qu’il n’y ait qu’un Prince; et de fait, il s’est efforeé de former un éstat le plus tyrannique du monde; et en autre lieu il confesse, que l’éstat de Venice est le plus beau de tous, lequel est une pure Aristocratic, s’il en fût onques: tellement qu’il ne sçait à quoi se tenir.” (De la République, Liv. vi. chap. iv. Paris, 1576.) In the Latin version of the above passage, the author applies to Machiavel the phrase, .

One of the earliest apologists for Machiavel was Albericus Gentilis, an Italian author of whom some account will be given afterwards. His words are these: “Machiavel, a warm panegyrist and keen assertor of democracy; born, educated, promoted under a republican government, was in the highest possible degree hostile to tyranny. The scope of his work, accordingly, is not to instruct tyrants; but, on the contrary, by disclosing their secrets to their oppressed subjects, to expose them to public view, stripped of all their trappings.” He afterwards adds, that “Machiavel’s real design was, under the mask of giving lessons to sovereigns, to open the eyes of the people; and that he assumed this mask in the hope of thereby securing a freer circulation to his doctrines.” (De Legationibus, Lib. iii. c. ix. Lond. 1585.) The same idea was afterwards adopted and zealously contended for by Wicquefort, the author of a noted book entitled the Ambassador; and by many other writers of a later date. Bayle, in his Dictionary, has stated ably and impartially the arguments on both sides of the question; evidently leaning however very decidedly, in his own opinion, to that of Machiavel’s Apologists.

The following passage from the excellent work of M. Simonde de Sismondi on the Literature of the South, appears to me to approach very near to the truth in the estimate it contains both of the spirit of the Prince, and of the character of the author. “The real object of Machiavel cannot have been to confirm upon the throne a tyrant whom he detested, and against whom he had already conspired; nor is it more probable that he had a design to expose to the people the maxims of tyranny, in order to render them odious. Universal experience made them at that time sufficiently known to all Italy; and that infernal policy which Machiavel reduced to principles, was, in the sixteenth century, practised by every government. There is rather, in his manner of treating it, a universal bitterness against mankind; a contempt of the whole human race; which makes him address them in the language to which they had debased themselves. He speaks to the interests of men, and to their selfish calculations, as if he thought it useless to appeal to their enthusiasm or to their moral feelings.”

I agree perfectly with M. de Sismondi in considering the two opposite hypotheses referred to in the above extract, as alike untenable; and have only to add to his remarks, that, in writing the Prince, the author seems to have been more under the influence of spleen, of ill-humour, and of blasted hopes, than of any deliberate or systematical purpose, either favourable or adverse to human happiness. The prevailing sentiment in his mind probably was, .

According to this view of the subject, Machiavel’s Prince, instead of being considered as a new system of political morality, invented by himself, ought to be regarded merely as a digest of the maxims of state policy then universally acted upon in the Italian courts. If I be not mistaken, it was in this light that the book was regarded by Lord Bacon, whose opinion concerning it being, in one instance, somewhat ambiguously expressed, has been supposed by several writers of note (particularly Bayle and Mr Roscoe) to have coincided with that quoted above from Albericus Gentilis. To me it appears, that the very turn of the sentence appealed to on this occasion is rather disrespectful than otherwise to Machiavel’s character. “ 1em