XIX. I am so far from thinking that Machiavel has made the world worse
in this respect, or from supposing that the princes of these times,
have refined upon the iniquitous politics of Machiavel, that I firmly
believe, if we limit our enquiries precisely to Europe, we shall find
the sovereigns of it in general, much better than those of the remote
ages.
XX. Now-a-days, if it is in contemplation to impose some new burthen
on the subject, or to wage war with a neighbouring state, divines and
lawyers are consulted upon the justice and propriety of the measure;
an enquiry is made, how the laws stand with respect to the subject
matter in question, and the archives and records are examined and
turned over; and although it often happens, that from the ambitious
adulation of the people consulted, a right is attributed to their
prince, which in reality does not belong to him, their malice does not
impeach his good faith. In former times this was not the case. If a
prince was disposed to trample on the rights of his subjects, or to
subdue his neighbours, he consulted nobody, nor made any other enquiry
or examination, than whether he had force and power sufficient to
accomplish what he meditated; and the question was always decided, by
his ability or inability to execute what he designed. In times not very
distant from our own, and even in the most polished kingdoms, where the
true religion has humanized people’s minds, when the person invaded
by a powerful prince his neighbour, has represented to him, that his
pretensions to what he possesses are just and legal; the invader has
laughed at the representation, and answered savagely, in the language
that was then become proverbial in the mouths of kings and ministers
of state, that the rights of princes were not to be determined by old
rolls of parchment, but by burnished arms.