on which it closes was not false.  Machiavelli hoped that what Cesare Borgia had but just failed in accomplishing, Lorenzo de’ Medici, with the assistance of a younger Pope than Alexander, a firmer basis to his princedom in Florence, and a grasp upon the states of the Church made sure by the policy of Julius II., might effect.  Whether so good a judge of character as Machiavelli expected really much from Lorenzo may be doubted.

[1] We are, however, bound to remember that Leo was only made Pope in March 1513, and that the Principe was nearly finished in the following December.  Machiavelli cannot therefore be credited with knowing as well as we do now to what length the ambition of the Medici was about to run when he composed his work.  He wrote in the hope that it might induce them to employ him.

[2] The two long letters to Fr. Vettori (Aug. 26, 1513) and to Piero Soderini (no date) should be studied side by side with the Principe for the light they throw on Machiavelli’s opinions there expressed.

These circumstances make the morality of the book the more remarkable.  To teach political science denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a worthy object.  But while seeking to lay bare the springs of action, and to separate statecraft from morals, Machiavelli found himself impelled to recognize a system of inverted ethics.  The abrupt division of the two realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature.  Unable to escape the logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice.  He believed that the right way to attain a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy was to proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a political adventurer.  The public ethics of his day had sunk to this low level.  Success by means of plain dealing was impossible.  The game of statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence.  Even the clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured by the muddy medium of intrigue in which he had been working all his life.  Even his keen insight was dazzled by the false splendor of the adventurer Cesare Borgia.

To have formulated the ethics of the Principe is not diabolical.  There is no inventive superfluity of naughtiness in the treatise.  It is simply a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy, where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms of material aggrandizement, glory, gain, and greatness.  No one thought of judging men by their motives but by their practice; they were not regarded as moral but as political beings, responsible, that is to say, to no law but the obligation of success.  Crimes which we regard as horrible were then commended as magnanimous, if it could be shown that they were prompted by a firm will and had for their object a deliberate