government is less than in newly made monarchies, because it will be sufficient for the reigning prince not to be worse than his predecessors, and, in case of unusual events, to yield to the pressure of circumstances, and for a time float with the stream of public opinion.'

In order to ascertain whom Machiavel really means to instruct, I must desire my readers to attend to the manner in which he conveys instruction.

"There is no method of keeping possession of a conquered country so effectual as to impoverish or ruin it. Whoever becomes master of a state accustomed to freedom, unless he adopts this method, may expect to be soon driven out of it. For the name of liberty and their ancient laws, of which no length of being nor no benefits conferred can ever efface the memory, will be to the conquered people the unceasing tocsin of rebellion. Whatever care the conqueror may take, unless the inhabitants are either destroyed or dispersed, that liberty and these laws will never be forgotten, but will burst forth at every favourable juncture. When, indeed, the conquered country has been accustomed to live under kingly government, and the race of the prince is extinct, the inhabitants being trained to the yoke yet deprived of their ancient master, unable to agree in the choice of a prince from among themselves, and with liberty being perfectly unaoquainted, display no energy in their resistance, and the foreign prince may make a sure conquest without much difficulty. But in a conquered republic there will be an eternal hatred, an eternal thirst for revenge, an eternal stimulus in the memory of their ancient freedom, so that the most sure method of keeping them in subjection is to destroy or disperse them. **

In the chapter of which the above is an extract, it seems to have been the object of Machiavel to deter princes from aiming at the conquest of free states. He assures them, that if they are even successful in the first instance, the spirit of liberty, which can never be destroyed, will make the conquest very insecure. It is greatly to be lamented that there should still be princes not fully convinced of the truth of this opinion.

As precept falls infinitely short of example, Machiavel in the seventh chapter presents to princes a model for them to regulate their conduct by. And here, as has been well remarked by Rosseau, the very choice of his hero sufficiently proves the real object he had in view. It is the notorious Cæsar Borgia whom he • Del Principe, cap. v.

holds forth as a model for princes. A short account of the life of this miscreant will be necessary in order to illustrate the hidden meaning of Machiavel.

Cæsar Borgia was the second of the five natural children of pope Alexander VI. by the celebrated courtezan, Vannozia. He trod in his father's footsteps, and, extraordinary as it may appear, even outstripped him in the career of fraud, cruelty, and every species of moral turpitude. With respect to the education and juvenile years of this monster we are entirely in the dark. It would have been curious to have known the gradations by which he marched to the summit of depravity. There can be no doubt but that the son of so wealthy a father was brought up as the children of the rich generally are; that those, who approached him, gratified with a servile eagerness all the wantonness of caprice and submitted to all the fury of his passions. In 1493, almost immediately after his ascension to the papal throne, Alexander invested his son with the purple, although the dissatisfaction of the conclave was sufficiently apparent in the loud complaints of some and the silent murmurs of others. Cæsar began his career of blood in 1497, by the murder of his elder brother the duke of Gandia, his rival both in love and glory. He gave a splendid entertainment to him and their common mother Vannozia, and the next morning the unfortunate duke was found in the Tiber pierced with nine wounds. In 1498 he threw off the cardinal's dress, was made by Louis XII. of France duke of Valentinois, and was presented with a company of one hundred men at arms and a pension of 20,000 livres. In 1500 he poisoned Alphonso of Arragon, who had married his sister Lucretia Borgia. In 1502 he strangled Giulio di Varano and his two sons the lords of Camerino, afler fraudulently making himself master of their possessions. I do not here mention the splendid military achievements of Cæsar Borgia, because they are detailed in the chapter of The Prince' which I shall soon lay before the reader, and because I wish not to dazzle his eyes with their false lustre, but present him with a view of his vices in all their native ugliness. On the last day of the year 1502 he murdered Paolo Ursino, the duke of Gravina, Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Oliverotto da Fermo, all sove

reign princes of Italy, who by insidious caresses were drawn into his snare.

It would be impossible to detail the numerous murders committed by Alexander and his son, at Rome. Riches excited their avarice, reputation their envy, and the slightest opposition to their measures, the least effort to shake off their detestable yoke, brought down dreadful vengeance. Against this vengeance not even the sacred purple was a safeguard. Cardinal after cardinal expired under the dreadful torments of poison, or yielded to the stab of the midnight assassin: the swollen body or the gashed carcase, the starting eyeball or the livid wound, announced their fate to an enslaved and stupid people. It has been my task to describe wickedness, I should hope almost unexampled, revelling in all the insolence of triumph; I feel pleasure in adding that even in this world crimes like these did not go unpunished. It has been already seen that Alexander drank the poison prepared for another, and though Cæsar escaped immediate death, his torment was rather prolonged than ended. He who had dipped his hands in blood for the sake of acquiring possessions was stripped of every place he possessed: he who had kept so many of his fellow creatures pining in prison was himself imprisoned by pope Julius II. the successor of Alexander, and he was only released from his dungeon to meet a violent death at the siege of the castle of Viani in Navarre. Examples like this ought to make a very sensible impression on mankind; it is but too true that all absolute monarchs, though they may differ in degree, have the same object, and employ the same means as Cæsar Borgia. The lesson eternally transmitted from one to another is Acquire dominion my son, honestly if you can, but acquire dominion.' Some of them, indeed, may console themselves with the pharasaical thanksgiving. "Lord, though I have oppressed my subjects, though I have been the means of depriving thousands of my fellow-creatures of existence, I am not as Cæsar Borgia was a poisoner and a fratricide;" but this is all,

Tristius haud illis monstrum nec sævior ulla

Pestes et ira Deûm Stygiis sese extulit undis.

I now appeal to the good sense of the reader, whether it is likely that Machiavel seriously recommended such a monster as a mo

del for imitation. I cannot indeed convey a better idea of the spirit in which the whole of The Prince' is written, than by extracting the chapter in which Cæsar Borgia is pretended to be held forth as a model to tyrants.

'Chapter 7. Of new principalities acquired by fortune or by the arms of others.'

"Those who are raised to the throne, from a private station, through fortune alone, find of course little difficulty in ascending, but with great difficulty maintain their situation. They meet with no impediments in the road through which they hasten with winged speed, these are all reserved for hereafter. The persons I allude to are those who gain dominion by money or by the favor of the former possessor: examples of the first are those Romans who from a private station attained the imperial dignity by bribing the soldiery, and of the second the many private persons who in the states of Ionia and of the Hellespont were made princes by Darius, that they might contribute to his security and redound to his glory. These rest simply on the will and on the fortune of those who raised them, two things very precarious, and therefore their continuance in their exalted rank depends neither on their own ability nor on their own power. Their ability, unless it be of a very uncommon kind, will be of no avail; for how should men who have been accustomed only to a private station know how to reign? and their power can only rest on a very slight foundation. New states, like all other natural productions of quick growth, cannot take such deep root as to defy the power of storms. I always except those persons whose abilities are so transcendant, and energies so uncommon, that they immediately know how to adapt themselves to circumstances, and never suffer the favors of fortune to pass away unprofitably.

“I will bring examples, fresh in our memory, of the two cases of acquiring sovereignty by talent and by fortune. These are Francis Sforza

Francis Sforza besieged Milan in 1450 and compelled the inhabitants to acknowledge him as their chief. He was the second of the name, and the manner in which his father acquired the appellation is remarkable. He was the son of a peasant, and his name was Jacomuzio Atténdulo. He was one day felling timber when a party of soldiers passed by; the enlivening sound of their martial instruments struck his ear; he paused from his labour, he weighed in his mind the license and pleasures of a military life against the tedious uniformity of rural employment, and he had already decided the point in his own mind, when, influenced by the superstition of the age, he threw his hatchet among the boughs of the tree he was felling, determining if it remained entangled he would continue his oc

and Cæsar Borgia. The first, by the proper exertion of great abilities, became duke of Milan, and what he had acquired with infinite labour he retained with little difficulty. On the other hand Cæsar Borgia (called by the vulgar Duke Valentine) acquired his dominion through the fortune of his father, by whose death he was deprived of it notwithstanding he did every thing that a prudent and able man could do to secure the possession which he had obtained by the arms and fortune of another. For though, as has been already said, he who does not lay his foundations before hand, may by dint of great ability lay them afterwards, yet it must be with the most extreme labour on the part of the architect and with the greatest danger to the building. Whoever considers the whole progress of the duke will see what great foundations he laid for future power. I do not think it at all irrelevant or superfluous to enter into the detail of his actions; for I know not how better to instruct a PRINCE than by his example, and if in the issue he was unsuccessful, this is not to be imputed to his misconduct, but to the extraordinary malignity of his fortune.

“Alexander VI. in endeavouring to aggrandize the duke his son, had many immediate and probable future difficulties to encounter. In the first place he saw no means of making him master of any state independent of the church, and he knew also that the duke of Milan and the Venetians would not permit a dismemberment of the ecclesiastical states, because Faenza and Rimini were already under the protection of the latter. He saw besides that the arms of Italy, and those in particular that were capable of doing him any material service, were in the hands of those persons who were particularly interested in opposing any extension of the papal power, such as the Ursini, the Colonni, and their followers, on whom he could place no dependance. It became therefore necessary to break these connexions and attachments, and to throw the Italian states into confusion, that he might securely make himself master of some of them. This was not difficult, because it happened that the Venetians, moved by other causes, were endeavouring to introduce the French into Italy, and the pope not only did not oppose this, but dissolved the marriage between Louis XII. and his first wife on purpose to facilitate it. The king of France therefore entered Italy by the aid of the Venetians and with the

cupation, but if it fell to the ground, that he would become a soldier. The hatchet fell, and Jacomuzio was soon drilled into one of the first generals of the age. Like most military men, he became ferocious and overbearing, and the nickname of Sforza was given him from his continually talking of rapine and carnage, and employing no argument but force. This name, originally a term of reproach, soon became one of the most illustrious of Italy.