PRINCE, The CB Principe)), by Nieto1?;• Machiavelli (written 1513, published in a Latin version 1523, and in the original Italian 1532), holds a high place both in history and in litera ture. Historically the chief document of the centralizing and nationalizing movements of Renaissance Europe, it was produced by the country that most conspicuously failed to cen tralize and to nationalize. The Wars of the Roses had turned England from feudalism to the strong Tudor monarchy ; Louis XI in France had subdued his great nobles and estab lished a national postal system and a royal standing army; Ferdinand and Isabella had united Castile and Aragon, and at the expense of Moors, Jews and heretics had purchased the solidarity of Spain; but Italy, long after these national consolidations, continued to suffer from the ambitions of local despots and con dottieri, and from the incessant struggle of secular political bodies with the Pope. Dis united, she was again and again the prey of foreigners; Charles VIII of France an 1494 had taken her without bloodshed, and, as the saying was, the chalk with which his unrestricted soldiers marked their quarters. It was no wonder that Machiavelli, Florentine historian, diplomatist and patriot, was looking about for the strong man who should liberate and unify Italy. For this imaginary personage 'The Prince' is a textbook in the methods of acquiring and governing a state.
Cesare Borgia had almost carved out an Italian kingdom when his plans were frustrated by the death of his father, Pope Alexander VI, together with his own sickness in that emer gency, and his neglect to prevent the election of Julius II. Both his success and his failure made him an ideal example for the ideal Prince to observe. His success was due to ruthless energy and cunning, an imposing personality and boundless self-assertion. His failure was due to adverse chance, which struck just be fore he had quite consolidated his power, and to his own want of adaptability to his bad luck. The Prince, therefore, first should exercise virtu, in which Machiavelli sums up all the forces of the strong individual; and, secondly, should adapt himself to Fortuna, in which are summed up all the forces of what we now call the environment. When fortune changes, the Prince must change too, lest she ruin him.
He must, as Bacon wrote under Machiavelli's influence, °make the wheels of Ethel mind concentric and voluble with the wheels of for tune.° The keeping of his promises, for ex ample, after circumstances have changed, may clearly be inexpedient. Nor is his virtil to be any more ((virtuous° than his attitude toward shifting fortune. He may use any degree of guile and cruelty to attain his end; but these must be judiciously employed— cruelty, for ex ample, sharply and on an egregious scale at the moment of the coup d'etat, not vacillatingly and in small doses throughout the reign; for the latter policy, both a sign and a cause of weak ness, merely makes the Prince despised and hated instead of feared, and may hasten his fall. Like the dishonoring of women, it should be avoided because, by setting large numbers of persons against the Prince, and by making him lose glory, it imperils his success. The sanc tions of his conduct are thus wholly human: success and fame among men.
Machiavelli evidently feels that the need for order and unity in the state ought to outweigh whatever ethical scruple the Prince may enter tain. Just here is where (The Prince' becomes the classical document of Machtpolitik and raison d'etat. For in establishing order the Prince must of necessity not only police his own city-state, his Rimini or Perugia, but also ac quire other city-states to be consolidated with it into a principality— else the old disorders between states will be kindled anew. Hence Machiavelli's policy of the strong unethical hand must be pursued both within and between states; it is not only intranational but inter national. The implication is that there is no room for morality either between individuals engaged in the process of forming possible states — i.e., in the process of competing for power, or between states — which are tacitly assumed to be continually struggling with each other to see which shall absorb the others. Just where, if any., here, this ruthless compe tition is to cease — just how large the orderly group or principality must be before it can stop expanding for the preservation of its par ticular type of order — Prince! does not tell us; it could not, after all, antic pate•the 19th and the 20th centuries.