[Sidenote:  National Defence.]

The chapters on military organisation may be more conveniently considered in conjunction with The Art of War.  It is enough at present to point out two or three observations of Machiavelli which touch politics from the military side.  To his generation they were entirely novel, though mere commonplace to-day.  National strength means national stability and national greatness; and this can be achieved, and can only be achieved, by a national army.  The Condottiere system, born of sloth and luxury, has proved its rottenness.  Your hired general is either a tyrant or a traitor, a bully or a coward.  ’In a word the armour of others is too wide or too strait for us:  it falls off us, or it weighs us down.’  And in a fine illustration he compares auxiliary troops to the armour of Saul which David refused, preferring to fight Goliath with his sling and stone.

[Sidenote:  Conduct of the Prince.]

Having assured the external security of the State, Machiavelli turns once more to the qualities and conduct of the Prince.  So closely packed are these concluding chapters that it is almost impossible to compress them further.  The author at the outset states his purpose:  ’Since it is my object to write what shall be useful to whosoever understands it, it seems to me better to follow the practical truth of things rather than an imaginary view of them.  For many Republics and Princedoms have been imagined that were never seen or known to exist in reality.  And the manner in which we live and in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder that he who suits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself.’  Nothing that Machiavelli wrote is more sincere, analytic, positive and ruthless.  He operates unflinchingly on an assured diagnosis.  The hand never an instant falters, the knife is never blunt.  He deals with what is, and not with what ought to be.  Should the Prince be all-virtuous, all-liberal, all-humane?  Should his word be his bond for ever?  Should true religion be the master-passion of his life?  Machiavelli considers.  The first duty of the Prince (or Government) is to maintain the existence, stability, and prosperity of the State.  Now if all the world were perfect so should the Prince be perfect too.  But such are not the conditions of human life.  An idealising Prince must fall before a practising world.  A Prince must learn in self-defence how to be bad, but like Caesar Borgia, he must be a great judge of occasion.  And what evil he does must be deliberate, appropriate, and calculated, and done, not selfishly, but for the good of the State of which he is trustee.  There is the power of Law and the power of Force.  The first is proper to men, the second to beasts.  And that is why Achilles was brought up by Cheiron the Centaur that he might learn to use both natures.  A ruler must be half lion and half fox, a fox to discern the toils, a lion to drive off the wolves.  Merciful,