Introduction - Page 2

is clearly manifested. It
was during his retirement upon his little estate at San Casciano that
Machiavelli wrote /The Prince/, the most famous of all his writings,
and here also he had begun a much more extensive work, his /Discourses
on the Decades of Livy/, which continued to occupy him for several
years. These /Discourses/, which do not form a continuous commentary
on Livy, give Machiavelli an opportunity to express his own views on
the government of the state, a task for which his long and varied
political experience, and an assiduous study of the ancients rendered
him eminently qualified. The /Discourses/ and /The Prince/, written at
the same time, supplement each other and are really one work. Indeed,
the treatise, /The Art of War/, though not written till 1520 should be
mentioned here because of its intimate connection with these two
treatises, it being, in fact, a further development of some of the
thoughts expressed in the /Discorsi/. /The Prince/, a short work,
divided into twenty-six books, is the best known of all Machiavelli's
writings. Herein he expresses in his own masterly way his views on the
founding of a new state, taking for his type and model Cæsar Borgia,
although the latter had failed in his schemes for the consolidation of
his power in the Romagna. The principles here laid down were the
natural outgrowth of the confused political conditions of his time.
And as in the /Principe/, as its name indicates, Machiavelli is
concerned chiefly with the government of a Prince, so the /Discorsi/
treat principally of the Republic, and here Machiavelli's model
republic was the Roman commonwealth, the most successful and most
enduring example of popular government. Free Rome is the embodiment of
his political idea of the state. Much that Machiavelli says in this
treatise is as true to-day and holds as good as the day it was
written. And to us there is much that is of especial importance. To
select a chapter almost at random, let us take Book I., Chap. XV.:
"Public affairs are easily managed in a city where the body of the
people is not corrupt; and where equality exists, there no
principality can be established; nor can a republic be established
where there is no equality."

No man has been more harshly judged than Machiavelli, especially in
the two centuries following his death. But he has since found many
able champions and the tide has turned. /The Prince/ has been termed a
manual for tyrants, the effect of which has been most pernicious. But
were Machiavelli's doctrines really new? Did he discover them? He
merely had the candor and courage to write down what everybody was
thinking and what everybody knew. He merely gives us the impressions
he had received from a long and intimate