vous craindrez que le mouvement de cette grande machine ne fasse sur vous l’effet de Gulliver, qui, lorsqu’il deplacait sa jambe, ecrasait les Lilliputiens.  Exhortez-vous, devancez le temps, agrandissez votre imagination, regardez de loin, et vous verrez que ces grands personnages que vous croyez violents, cruels, que sais-je? ne sont que des politiques.  Ils se connaissent, se jugent mieux que vous, et, quand ils sont reellement habiles, ils savent se rendre maitres de leurs passions car ils vont jusqu’a en calculer les effets.’  Even in his carriage at Waterloo was found a French translation of The Prince profusely annotated.

[Sidenote:  The Defence.]

But from the first the defence was neither idle nor weak.  The assault was on the morals of the man:  the fortress held for the ideas of the thinker.  He does not treat of morals, therefore he is immoral, cried the plaintiff.  Has he spoken truth or falsehood?  Is his word the truth and will his truth prevail? was the rejoinder.  In Germany and Italy especially and in France and England in less degree, philosophers and critics have argued and written without stint and without cease.  As history has grown wider and more scientific so has the preponderance of opinion leaned to the Florentine’s favour.

It would be impossible to recapitulate the arguments or even to indicate the varying points of view.  And indeed the main hindrance in forming a just idea of The Prince is the constant treatment of a single side of the book and the preconceived intent of the critic.  Bacon has already been mentioned.  Among later names are Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibnitz.  Herder gives qualified approval, while Fichte frankly throws down the glove as The Prince’s champion.  ’Da man weiss dass politische Machtfragen nie, am wenigsten in einem verderbten Volke, mit den Mitteln der Moral zu loesen sind, so ist es unverstaendig das Buch von Fuersten zu verschreien.  Macchiavelli hatte einen Herrscher zu schildern, keinen Klosterbruder.’  The last sentence may at least be accepted as a last word by practical politicians.  Ranke and Macaulay, and a host of competent Germans and Italians have lent their thought and pens to solve the riddle in the Florentine’s favour.  And lastly, the course of political events in Europe have seemed to many the final justification of the teaching of The Prince.  The leaders of the Risorgimento thought that they found in letters, ‘writ with a stiletto,’ not only the inspirations of patriotism and the aspirations to unity, but a sure and trusted guide to the achievement.  Germany recognised in the author a schoolmaster to lead them to unification, and a military instructor to teach them of an Armed People.  Half Europe snatched at the principle of Nationality.  For in The Prince, Machiavelli not only begat ideas but fertilised the ideas of others, and whatever the future estimation of the book may be, it stands, read or unread, as a most potent, if not as the dominant, factor in European politics for four hundred years.