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Rh ance with all those arts of dissimulation and intrigue, which, in the petty cabinets of Italy, were then universally confounded with political wisdom;—an imagination familiarized to the cool contemplation of whatever is perfidious or atrocious in the history of conspirators and of tyrants;—combined with a graphical skill in holding up to laughter the comparatively harmless follies of ordinary life. His dramatic humour has been often compared to that of Moliere; but it resembles it rather in comic force, than in benevolent gaiety, or in chastened morality. Such as it is, however, it forms an extraordinary contrast to that strength of intellectual character, which, in one page, reminds us of the deep sense of Tacitus, and in the next, of the dark and infernal policy of Cæsar Borgia. To all this must be superadded a purity of taste, which has enabled him, as an historian, to rival the severe simplicity of the Grecian masters; and a sagacity in combining historical facts, which was afterwards to afford lights to the school of Montesquieu.

Eminent, however, as the talents of Machiavel unquestionably were, he cannot be numbered among the benefactors of mankind. In none of his writings, does he exhibit any marks of that lively sympathy with the fortunes of the human race, or of that warm zeal for the interests of truth and justice, without the guidance of which, the highest mental endowments, when applied to moral or to political researches, are in perpetual danger of mistaking their way. What is still more remarkable, he seems to have been altogether blind to the mighty changes in human affairs, which, in consequence of the recent invention of printing, were about to result from the progress of Reason and the diffusion of Knowledge. Through the whole of his Prince (the most noted as well as one of the latest of his publications) he proceeds on the supposition, that the sovereign has no other object in governing, but his own advantage; the very circumstance which, in the judgment of Aristotle, constitutes the essence of the worst species of tyranny. He assumes also the possibility of retaining mankind in perpetual bondage by the old policy of the double doctrine; or, in other words, by enlightening the few, and hoodwinking the many;—a policy less or more practised by statesmen in all ages and countries; but which (wherever the freedom of the press is respected) cannot fail, by the insult it offers to the discernment of the multitude, to increase the insecurity of those who have the weakness to employ it. It has been contended, indeed, by some of Machiavel’s apologists, that his real object in unfolding and systematising the mysteries of King-Craft, was to point out indirectly to the governed the

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