THE PRINCE
BY
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY
LUIGI RICCI
HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPETOWN
BOMBAY CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
1909
PREFACE
Of all Machiavelli's works _The Prince_ is undoubtedly the greatest;
and a new English edition of it is likely to be welcome to all those
who have not the advantage of reading it in the classical Italian
original.
For a true appreciation of Machiavelli, impossible in a brief Preface,
I must refer the English reader to Macaulay's Essay on the Italian
historian and statesman.[1] In it he will see how our Author's ideas and
work were wrongfully and wilfully misinterpreted by the very men who,
while profiting by his wisdom, have with great ingratitude criticised
the statesman and defamed his name, as that of the inventor of the
worst political system ever imagined. Yet, as his whole life was an
indefatigable and unremitting endeavour to secure for his native
Florence a good and popular government, and as he lost his great office
of Secretary to the Florentine Republic on account of his avowed
liberal opinions, it is not only unjust but ridiculous to accuse him of
helping tyrants to enslave the people. What he did was to show in the
most deliberate and in the plainest way the arts by which free peoples
were made slaves; and, had his words of advice been always heeded, no
tyrant in Italy or elsewhere could have been successful in his policy.
That he was not listened to, and his advice scorned and spurned, was
not Machiavelli's fault.
Those who still share the opinion of his interested detractors should
read his private correspondence with the leaders of liberal ideas
in Italy--many of his letters being still left unpublished in the
MS. Collection of Giuliano Ricci in the National Library, in the
Riccardiana Library (No. 2467), in the Government Archives (Strozzi,
Nos. 133 and 1028) of Florence, in the Barberini Library, and in the
Collezione Gonnelli of the Palatine Library in Rome.
LUIGI RICCI.
22 ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON, W.
[1] "Machiavelli" by Thomas Babington Macaulay is available at Project
Gutenberg in Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 1,
ebook 55901.
CONTENTS
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI TO LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT
1. The various kinds of Government and the ways by which they are
established.
2. Of Hereditary Monarchies.
3. Of Mixed Monarchies.
4. Why the Kingdom of Darius, occupied by Alexander, did not rebel
against the successors of the latter after his death.
5. The way to govern Cities or Dominions that, previous to being
occupied, lived under their own Laws.
6. Of New Dominions which have been acquired by one's own Arms and
Powers.
7. Of New Dominions acquired by the Power of others or by Fortune.
8. Of those who have attained the position of Prince by villainy.
9. Of the Civic Principality.
10. How the strength of all States should be measured.
11. Of Ecclesiastical Principalities.
12. The different kinds of Militia and Mercenary Soldiers.
13. Of Auxiliary, Mixed, and Native Troops
14. What the duties of a Prince are with regard to the Militia.
16. Of the things for which Men, and especially Princes, are praised or
blamed.
16. Of Liberality and Niggardliness.
17. Of Cruelty and Clemency, and whether it is better to be loved or
feared.
18. In what way Princes must keep faith.
19. That we must avoid being despised and hated.
20. Whether Fortresses and other things which Princes often make are
useful or injurious.
21. How a Prince must act in order to gain reputation.
22. Of the Secretaries of Princes.
23. How Flatterers must be shunned.
24. Why the Princes of Italy have lost their States.
25. How much Fortune can do in human affairs, and how it may be opposed.
26. Exhortation to liberate Italy from the Barbarians.
NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI
TO
LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT
SON OF PIERO DI MEDICI
It is customary for those who wish to gain the favour of a prince to
endeavour to do so by offering him gifts of those things which they
hold most precious, or in which they know him to take especial delight.
In this way princes are often presented with horses, arms, cloth of
gold, gems, and such-like ornaments worthy of their grandeur. In my
desire, however, to offer to Your Highness some humble testimony of
my devotion, I have been unable to find among my possessions anything
which I hold so dear or esteem so highly as that knowledge of the deeds
of great men which I have acquired through a long experience of modern
events and a constant study of the past.
The results of my long observations and reflections are recorded in the
little volume which I now offer to Your Highness: and although I deem
this work unworthy of Your Highness's notice, yet my confidence in your
humanity assures me that you will accept it, knowing that it is not
in my power to offer you a greater gift than that of enabling you to
understand in the shortest possible time all those things which I have
learnt through danger and suffering in the course of many years. I have
not sought to adorn my work with long phrases or high-sounding words or
any of those allurements and ornaments with which many writers seek to
embellish their books, as I desire no honour for my work but such as
its truth and the gravity of its subject may justly deserve. Nor will
it, I trust, be deemed presumptuous on the part of a man of humble and
obscure condition to attempt to discuss and criticise the government of
princes; for in the same way that landscape painters station themselves
in the valleys in order to draw mountains or elevated ground, and
ascend an eminence in order to get a good view of the plains, so it
is necessary to be a prince to be able to know thoroughly the nature
of a people, and to know the nature of princes one must be one of the
populace.
May I trust, therefore, that Your Highness will accept this little gift
in the spirit in which it is offered; and if Your Highness will deign
to peruse it, you will recognise in it my ardent desire that you may
attain to that grandeur which fortune and your own merits presage for
you.
And should Your Highness gaze down from the summit of that eminence
towards this humble spot, you will recognise the great and unmerited
sufferings inflicted on me by a cruel fate.
THE PRINCE
CHAPTER I
THE VARIOUS KINDS OF GOVERNMENT AND THE WAYS BY WHICH THEY ARE
ESTABLISHED
All states and dominions which hold or have held sway over mankind are
either republics or monarchies. Monarchies are either hereditary ones,
in which the rulers have been for many years of the same family, or
else they are those of recent foundation. The newly founded ones are
either entirely new, as was Milan to Francesco Sforza, or else they
are, as it were, new members grafted on to the hereditary possessions
of the prince that annexes them, as is the kingdom of Naples to the
King of Spain. The dominions thus acquired have either been previously
accustomed to the rule of another prince, or else have been free
states, and they are annexed either by force of arms of the prince, or
of others, or else fall to him by good fortune or merit.