[Sidenote:  The Attack.]

There is no great book in the world of smaller compass than The Prince of Machiavelli.  There is no book more lucidly, directly, and plainly written.  There is no book that has aroused more vehement, venomous, and even truculent controversy from the moment of its publication until to-day.  And it is asserted with great probability that The Prince has had a more direct action upon real life than any other book in the world, and a larger share in breaking the chains and lighting the dark places of the Middle Ages.  It is a truism to say that Machiavellism existed before Machiavelli.  The politics of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, of Louis XI. of France, of Ferdinand of Spain, of the Papacy, of Venice, might have been dictated by the author of The Prince.  But Machiavelli was the first to observe, to compare, to diagnose, to analyse, and to formulate their principles of government.  The first to establish, not a divorce, but rather a judicial separation between the morals of a man and the morals of a government.  It is around the purpose and possible results of such a separation in politics, ethics, and religion that the storm has raged most fiercely.  To follow the path of that storm through near four centuries many volumes would be needed, and it will be more convenient to deal with the more general questions in summing up the influence of Machiavelli as a whole.  But the main lines and varying fortunes of the long campaign may be indicated.  During the period of its manuscript circulation and for a few years after its publication The Prince was treated with favour or at worst with indifference, and the first mutterings were merely personal to the author.  He was a scurvy knave and turncoat with neither bowels nor conscience, almost negligible.  But still men read him, and a change in conditions brought a change in front.  He had in The Prince, above all in the Discorsi, accused the Church of having ruined Italy and debauched the world.  In view of the writer’s growing popularity, of the Reformation and the Pagan Renaissance, such charges could no longer be lightly set aside.  The Churchmen opened the main attack.  Amongst the leaders was Cardinal Pole, to whom the practical precepts of The Prince had been recommended in lieu of the dreams of Plato, by Thomas Cromwell, the malleus monachorum of Henry VIII.  The Catholic attack was purely theological, but before long the Jesuits joined in the cry.  Machiavelli was burnt in effigy at Ingoldstadt.  He was subdolus diabolicarum cogitationum faber, and irrisor et atheos to boot.  The Pope himself gave commissions to unite against him, and his books were placed on the Index, together, it must be admitted, with those of Boccaccio, Erasmus, and Savonarola so the company was goodly.  But meanwhile, and perhaps in consequence, editions and translations of The Prince multiplied apace.  The great figures