Such was the actual condition of Italy at the end of the fifteenth century.  Neither public nor private morality in our sense of the word existed.  The crimes of the tyrants against their subjects and the members of their own families had produced a correlative order of crime in the people over whom they tyrannized.  Cruelty was met by conspiracy.  Tyrannicide became honorable; and the proverb, ’He who gives his own life can take a tyrant’s,’ had worked itself into popular language.  At this point it may be well to glance at the opinions concerning public murder which prevailed in Italy.  Machiavelli, in the Discorsi iii. 6, discusses the whole subject with his usual frigid and exhaustive analysis.  It is no part of his critical method to consider the morality of the matter.  He deals with the facts of history scientifically.  The esteem in which tyrannicide was held at Florence is proved by the erection of Donatello’s Judith in 1495, at the gate of the Palazzo Pubblico, with this inscription, exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere.  All the political theorists agree that to rid a state of its despot is a virtuous act.  They only differ about its motives and its utility.  In Guicciardini’s Reggimento di Firenze (Op.  Ined. vol. ii. pp. 53, 54, 114) the various motives of tyrannicide are discussed, and it is concluded that pochissimi sono stati quelli che si siano mossi meramente per amore della liberta della sua patria, a’ quali si conviene suprema laude.[1] Donato Giannotti (Opere, vol. i. p. 341) bids the conspirator consider whether the mere destruction of the despot will suffice to restore his city to true liberty and good government—­a caution by which Lorenzino de’ Medici in his assassination of Duke Alessandro might have profited; for he killed one tyrant in order only to make room for another.  Lorenzino’s own Apology (Varchi, vol. iii. pp. 283-295) is an important document, as showing that the murderer of a despot counted on the sympathy of honorable men.  So, too, is the verdict of Boscolo’s confessor (Arch.  Stor. vol. i. p. 309), who pronounced that conspiracy against a tyrant was no crime.  Nor did the demoralization of the age stop here.  Force, which had been substituted for Law in government, became, as it were, the mainspring of society.  Murders, poisoning, rapes, and treasons were common incidents of private as of public life.[2] In cities like Naples bloodguilt could be atoned at an inconceivably low rate.  A man’s life was worth scarcely more than that of a horse.  The palaces of the nobles swarmed with professional cut-throats, and the great ecclesiastics claimed for their abodes the right of sanctuary.  Popes sold absolution for the most horrible excesses, and granted indulgences beforehand for the commission of crimes of lust and violence.  Success was the standard