it is safer to temporize with than to meet it with Violence_.
As Rome grew in fame, power, and dominion, her neighbours, who at first
had taken no heed to the injury which this new republic might do them,
began too late to see their mistake, and desiring to remedy what should
have been remedied before, combined against her to the number of forty
nations. Whereupon the Romans, resorting to a method usual with them in
seasons of peril, appointed a dictator; that is, gave power to one man
to decide without advice, and carry out his resolves without appeal.
Which expedient, as it then enabled them to overcome the dangers by
which they were threatened, so always afterwards proved most
serviceable, when, at any time during the growth of their power,
difficulties arose to embarrass their republic.
In connection with this league against Rome we have first to note, that
when a mischief which springs up either in or against a republic, and
whether occasioned by internal or external causes, has grown to such
proportions that it begins to fill the whole community with alarm, it
is a far safer course to temporize with it than to attempt to quell it
by violence. For commonly those who make this attempt only add fuel to
the flame, and hasten the impending ruin. Such disorders arise in a
republic more often from internal causes than external, either through
some citizen being suffered to acquire undue influence, or from the
corruption of some institution of that republic, which had once been
the life and sinew of its freedom; and from this corruption being
allowed to gain such head that the attempt to check it is more
dangerous than to let it be. And it is all the harder to recognize
these disorders in their beginning, because it seems natural to men to
look with favour on the beginnings of things. Favour of this sort, more
than by anything else, is attracted by those actions which seem to have
in them a quality of greatness, or which are performed by the young.
For when in a republic some young man is seen to come forward endowed
with rare excellence, the eyes of all the citizens are at once turned
upon him, and all, without distinction, concur to do him honour; so
that if he have one spark of ambition, the advantages which he has from
nature, together with those he takes from this favourable disposition
of men’s minds, raise him to such a pitch of power, that when the
citizens at last see their mistake it is almost impossible for them to
correct it; and when they do what they can to oppose his influence the
only result is to extend it. Of this I might cite numerous examples,
but shall content myself with one relating to our own city.
Cosimo de’ Medici, to whom the house of the Medici in Florence owes the
origin of its fortunes, acquired so great a name from the favour
wherewith his own prudence and the blindness of others invested him,
that coming to be held in awe by the government, his fellow-citizens
deemed it dangerous to offend him, but still more dangerous to let him
alone. Nicolò da Uzzano, his cotemporary, who was accounted well versed
in all civil affairs, but who had made a first mistake in not
discerning the dangers which might grow from the rising influence of
Cosimo, would never while he lived, permit a second mistake to be made
in attempting to crush him; judging that such an attempt would be the
ruin of the State, as in truth it proved after his death. For some who
survived him, disregarding his counsels, combined against Cosimo and
banished him from Florence. And so it came about that the partisans of
Cosimo, angry at the wrong done him, soon afterwards recalled him and
made him prince of the republic, a dignity he never would have reached
but for this open opposition. The very same thing happened in Rome in
the case of Cæsar. For his services having gained him the good-will of
Pompey and other citizens, their favour was presently turned to fear,
as Cicero testifies where he says that “it was late that Pompey began
to fear Cæsar.” This fear led men to think of remedies, and the
remedies to which they resorted accelerated the destruction of the
republic.
I say, then, that since it is difficult to recognize these disorders in
their beginning, because of the false impressions which things produce
at the first, it is a wiser course when they become known, to temporize
with them than to oppose them; for when you temporize, either they die
out of themselves, or at any rate the injury they do is deferred. And
the prince who would suppress such disorders or oppose himself to their
force and onset, must always be on his guard, lest he help where he
would hinder, retard when he would advance, and drown the plant he
thinks to water. He must therefore study well the symptoms of the
disease; and, if he believe himself equal to the cure, grapple with it
fearlessly; if not, he must let it be, and not attempt to treat it in
any way. For, otherwise, it will fare with him as it fared with those
neighbours of Rome, for whom it would have been safer, after that city
had grown to be so great, to have sought to soothe and restrain her by
peaceful arts, than to provoke her by open war to contrive new means of
attack and new methods of defence. For this league had no other effect
than to make the Romans more united and resolute than before, and to
bethink themselves of new expedients whereby their power was still more
rapidly advanced; among which was the creation of a dictator; for this
innovation not only enabled them to surmount the dangers which then
threatened them, but was afterwards the means of escaping infinite
calamities into which, without it, the republic must have fallen.