popes refused all official employment to one who had been the brain of a
hostile government; but they encouraged him to write, and were not
offended by the things he wrote for them. Leo's own dealings with the
tyrant of Perugia were cited by jurists as a suggestive model for men
who have an enemy to get rid of. Clement confessed to Contarini that
honesty would be preferable, but that honest men get the worst of it:
"Io cognosco certo che voi dicete il vero, et che ad farla da homo da
bene, et a far il debito, seria proceder come mi aricordate; ma
bisognerebbe trovar la corrispondentia. Non vedete che il mondo e
ridutto a un termine che colui il qual e piu astuto et cum piu trame fa
il fatto suo, e piu laudato, et estimato piu valente homo, et piu
celebrato, et chi fa il contrario vien detto di esso; quel tale e una
bona persona, ma non val niente? Et se ne sta cum quel titulo solo di
bona persona.--Chi va bonamente vien trata da bestia." Two years after
this speech the astute Florentine authorised _The Prince_ to be
published at Rome.
It was still unprinted when Pole had it pressed on his attention by
Cromwell, and Brosch consequently suspects the story. Upon the death of
Clement, Pole opened the attack; but it was not pursued during the
reaction against things Medicean which occupied the reign of Farnese.
Machiavelli was denounced to the Inquisition on the 11th of November
1550, by Muzio, a man much employed in controversy and literary
repression, who, knowing Greek, was chosen by Pius V. for the work
afterwards committed to Baronius: "Senza rispetto alcuno insegna a non
servar ne fede, ne charita, ne religione; et dice che di queste cosi,
gli huomini se ne debbono servire per parer buoni, et per le grandezze
temporali, alle quali quando non servono non se ne dee fare stima. Et
non e questo peggio che heretica dottrina? Vedendosi che cio si
comporta, sono accetate come opere approvate dalla Santa Madre chiesa."
Muzio, who at the same time recommended the _Decamerone_, was not acting
from ethical motives. His accusation succeeded. When the Index was
instituted, in 1557, Machiavelli was one of the first writers condemned,
and he was more rigorously and implacably condemned than anybody else.
The Trent Commissioners themselves prepared editions of certain
prohibited authors, such as Clarius and Flaminius; Guicciardini was
suffered to appear with retrenchments; and the famous revision of
Boccaccio was carried out in 1573. This was due to the influence of
Victorius, who pleaded in vain for a castigated text of Machiavelli. He
continued to be specially excepted when permission was given to read
forbidden books. Sometimes there were other exceptions, such as
Dumoulin, Marini, or Maimbourg; but the exclusion of Machiavelli was
permanent, and when Lucchesini preached against him at the Gesu, he had
to apply to the Pope himself for licence to read him. Lipsius was
advised by his Roman censors to mix a little Catholic salt in his
Machiavellism, and to suppress a seeming protest against the universal
hatred for a writer _qui misera qua non manu hodie vapulat_. One of the
ablest but most contentious of the Jesuits, Raynaud, pursued his memory
with a story like that with which Tronchin improved the death of
Voltaire: "Exitus impiissimi nebulonis metuendus est eius aemulatoribus,
nam blasphemans evomuit reprobum spiritum."
In spite of this notorious disfavour, he has been associated with the
excesses of the religious wars. The daughter of the man to whom he
addressed _The Prince_ was Catharine of Medici, and she was reported to
have taught her children "surtout des traictz de cet athee Machiavel."
Boucher asserted that Henry III. carried him in his pocket: "qui
perpetuus ei in sacculo atque manibus est"; and Montaigne confirms the
story when he says: "Et dict on, de ce temps, que Machiavel est encores
ailleurs en credit." The pertinently appropriate quotation by which the
Queen sanctified her murderous resolve was supplied, not by her father's
rejected and discredited monitor, but by a bishop at the Council of
Trent, whose sermons had just been published: "Bisogna esser severo et
acuto, non bisogna esser clemente; e crudelta l' esser pietoso, e pieta
l' esser crudele." And the argument was afterwards embodied in the
_Controversies_ of Bellarmin: "Haereticis obstinatis beneficium est,
quod de hac vita tollantur, nam quo diutius vivunt, eo plures errores
excogitant; plures pervertunt, et majorem sibi damnationem acquirunt."
The divines who held these doctrines received them through their own
channels straight from the Middle Ages. The germ theory, that the wages
of heresy is death, was so expanded as to include the rebel, the
usurper, the heterodox or rebellious town, and it continued to develop
long after the time of Machiavelli. At first it had been doubtful
whether a small number of culprits justified the demolition of a city:
"Videtur quod si aliqui haeretici sunt in civitate potest exuri tota
civitas." Under Gregory XIII. the right is asserted unequivocally:
"Civitas ista potest igne destrui, quando in ea plures sunt haeretici."
In case of sedition, fire is a less suitable agent: "Propter rebellionem
civitas quandoque supponitur aratro et possunt singuli decapitari." As
to heretics the view was: "Ut hostes latronesque occidi possunt etiamsi
sunt clerici." A king, if he was judged a usurper, was handed over to
extinction: "Licite potest a quolibet de populo occidi, pro libertate
populi, quando non est recursus ad superiorem, a quo possit iustitia
fieri." Or, in the words of the scrupulous Soto: "Tunc quisque ius habet
ipsum extinguendi." To the end of the seventeenth century theologians
taught: "Occidatur, seu occidendus proscribatur, quando non alitur
potest haberi tranquillitas Reipublicae."
This was not mere theory, or the enforced logic of men in thrall to
mediaeval antecedents. Under the most carnal and unchristian king, the
Vaudois of Provence were exterminated in the year 1545, and Paul Sadolet
wrote as follows to Cardinal Farnese just before and just after the
event: "Aggionta hora questa instantia del predetto paese di Provenza a
quella che da Mons. Nuntio s'era fatta a Sua Maesta Christianissima a
nome di Sua Beatitudine et di Vostra Reverendissima Signoria, siamo in
ferma speranza, che vi si debbia pigliare qualche bono expediente et
farci qualche gagliarda provisione.--E seguito, in questo paese, quel
tanto desiderato et tanto necessario effetto circa le cose di Cabrieres,
che da vostra Signoria Reverendissima e stato si lungamente ricordato et
sollicitato et procurato." Even Melanchthon was provoked by the death of
Cromwell to exclaim that there is no better deed than the slaughter of a
tyrant; "Utinam Deus alicui forti viro hanc mentem inserat!" And in 1575
the Swedish bishops decided that it would be a good work to poison their
king in a basin of soup--an idea particularly repugnant to the author of
_De Rege et Regis Institutione_. Among Mariana's papers I have seen the
letter from Paris describing the murder of Henry III., which he turned
to such account in the memorable sixth chapter: "Communico con sus
superiores, si peccaria mortalmente un sacerdote que matase a un tirano.
Ellos le diceron que non era pecado, mas que quedaria irregular. Y no
contentandose con esto, ni con las disputas que avia de ordinario en la
Sorbona sobre la materia, continuando siempre sus oraciones, lo pregunto
a otros theologos, que le afirmavan lo mismo; y con esto se resolvio
enteramente de executarlo. Por el successo es de collegir que tuvo el
fraile alguna revelacion de Nuestro Senor en particular, y inspiracion
para executar el caso." According to Maffei, the Pope's biographer, the
priests were not content with saying that killing was no sin: "Cum illi
posse, nec sine magno quidem merito censuissent." Regicide was so
acceptable a work that it seemed fitly assigned to a divine
interposition.
When, on the 21st of January 1591, a youth offered his services to make
away with Henry IV., the Nuncio remitted the matter to Rome:
"Quantunque mi sia parso di trovarlo pieno di tale humilita, prudenza,
spirito et cose che arguiscono che questa sia inspiratione veramente
piuttosto che temerita e leggerezza." In a volume which, though recent,
is already rare, the Foreign Office published D'Avaux's advice to treat
the Protestants of Ireland much as William treated the Catholics of
Glencoe; and the argument of the Assassination Plot came originally from
a Belgian seminary. There were at least three men living far into the
eighteenth century who defended the massacre of St. Bartholomew in their
books; and it was held as late as 1741 that culprits may be killed
before they are condemned: "Etiam ante sententiam impune occidi possunt,
quando de proximo erant banniendi, vel quando eorum delictum est
notorium, grave, et pro quo poena capitis infligenda esset."
Whilst these principles were current in religion as well as in society,
the official censures of the Church and the protests of every divine
since Catharinus were ineffectual. Much of the profaner criticism
uttered by such authorities as the Cardinal de Retz, Voltaire, Frederic
the Great, Daunou, and Mazzini is not more convincing or more real.
Linguet was not altogether wrong in suggesting that the assailants knew
Machiavelli at second hand: "Chaque fois que je jette les yeux sur les
ouvrages de ce grand genie, je ne saurais concevoir, je l'avoue, la
cause du decri ou il est tombe. Je soupconne fortement que ses plus
grands ennemis sont ceux qui ne l'ont pas lu." Retz attributed to him a
proposition which is not in his writings. Frederic and Algernon Sidney
had read only one of his books, and Bolingbroke, a congenial spirit, who
quotes him so often, knew him very little. Hume spoils a serious remark
by a glaring eighteenth-century comment: "There is scarcely any maxim in
_The Prince_ which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted. The
errors of this politician proceeded, in a great measure, from his having
lived in too early an age of the world to be a good judge of political
truth." Bodin had previously written: "Il n'a jamais sonde le gue de la
science politique." Mazzini complains of his _analisi cadaverica ed
ignoranza della vita_; and Barthelemy St Hilaire, verging on paradox,
says: "On dirait vraiment que l'histoire ne lui a rien appris, non plus
que la conscience." That would be more scientific treatment than the
common censure of moralists and the common applause of politicians. It
is easier to expose errors in practical politics than to remove the
ethical basis of judgments which the modern world employs in common with
Machiavelli.
By plausible and dangerous paths men are drawn to the doctrine of the
justice of History, of judgment by results, the nursling of the
nineteenth century, from which a sharp incline leads to _The Prince_.
When we say that public life is not an affair of morality, that there is
no available rule of right and wrong, that men must be judged by their
age, that the code shifts with the longitude, that the wisdom which
governs the event is superior to our own, we carry obscurely tribute to
the system which bears so odious a name. Few would scruple to maintain
with Mr. Morley that the equity of history requires that we shall judge
men of action by the standards of men of action; or with Retz: "Les
vices d'un archeveque peuvent etre, dans une infinite de rencontres, les
vertus d'un chef de parti." The expounder of Adam Smith to France, J.B.
Say, confirms the ambitious coadjutor: "Louis XIV. et son despotisme et
ses guerres n'ont jamais fait le mal qui serait resulte des conseils de
ce bon Fenelon, l'apotre et le martyr de la vertu et du bien des
hommes." Most successful public men deprecate what Sir Henry Taylor
calls much weak sensibility of conscience, and approve Lord Grey's
language to Princess Lieven: "I am a great lover of morality, public and
private; but the intercourse of nations cannot be strictly regulated by
that rule." While Burke was denouncing the Revolution, Walpole wrote:
"No great country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not
go the lengths that may be necessary." All which had been formerly
anticipated by Pole: "Quanto quis privatam vitam agens Christi similior
erit tanto minus aptus ad regendum id munus iudicio hominum
existimabitur." The main principle of Machiavelli is asserted by his
most eminent English disciple: "It is the solecism of power to think, to
command the end, and yet not to endure the means." And Bacon leads up to
the familiar Jesuit: "Cui licet finis, illi et media permissa sunt."
The austere Pascal has said: "On ne voit rien de juste ou d'injuste qui
ne change de qualite en changeant de climat" (the reading _presque_ rien
was the precaution of an editor). The same underlying scepticism is
found not only in philosophers of the Titanic sort, to whom remorse is a
prejudice of education, and the moral virtues are "the political
offspring which flattery begat upon pride," but among the masters of
living thought. Locke, according to Mr. Bain, holds that we shall
scarcely find any rule of morality, excepting such as are necessary to
hold society together, and these too with great limitations, but what is
somewhere or other set aside, and an opposite established by whole
societies of men. Maine de Biran extracts this conclusion from the
_Esprit des Lois_: "Il n'y a rien d'absolu ni dans la religion, ni dans
la morale, ni, a plus forte raison, dans la politique." In the
mercantile economists Turgot detects the very doctrine of Helvetius: "Il
etablit qu'il n'y a pas lieu a la probite entre les nations, d'ou
suivroit que la monde doit etre eternellement un coupe-gorge. En quoi il
est bien d'accord avec les panegyristes de Colbert."
These things survive, transmuted, in the edifying and popular epigram:
"Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht." Lacordaire, though he spoke so
well of "L'empire et les ruses de la duree," recorded his experience in
these words: "J'ai toujours vu Dieu se justifier a la longue." Reuss, a
teacher of opposite tendency and greater name, is equally consoling:
"Les destinees de l'homme s'accomplissent ici-bas; la justice de Dieu
s'exerce et se manifeste sur cette terre." In the infancy of exact
observation Massillon could safely preach that wickedness ends in
ignominy: "Dieu aura son tour." The indecisive Providentialism of
Bossuet's countrymen is shared by English divines.
"Contemporaries," says Hare, "look at the agents, at their motives and
characters; history looks rather at the acts and their consequences."
Thirlwall hesitates to say that whatever is, is best; "but I have a
strong faith that it is for the best, and that the general stream of
tendency is toward good." And Sedgwick, combining induction with
theology, writes: "If there be a superintending Providence, and if His
will be manifested by general laws, operating both on the physical and
moral world, then must a violation of those laws be a violation of His
will, and be pregnant with inevitable misery."
Apart from the language of Religion, an optimism ranging to the bounds
of fatalism is the philosophy of many, especially of historians: "Le
vrai, c'est, en toutes choses, le fait." Sainte-Beuve says: "Il y a dans
tout fait general et prolonge une puissance de demonstration
insensible"; and Scherer describes progress as "une espece de logique
objective et impersonelle qui resout les questions sans appel." Ranke
has written: "Der beste Pruefstein ist die Zeit"; and Sybel explains that
this was not a short way out of confusion and incertitude, but a
profound generalisation: "Ein Geschlecht, ein Volk loest das andere ab,
und der Lebende hat Recht." A scholar of a different school and fibre,
Stahr the Aristotelian, expresses the same idea: "Die Geschichte soll
die Richtigkeit des Denkens bewaehren." Richelieu's maxim: "Les grands
desseins et notables entreprises ne se verifient jamais autrement que
par le succes"; and Napoleon's: "Je ne juge les hommes que par les
resultats," are seriously appropriated by Fustel de Coulanges: "Ce qui
caracterise le veritable homme d'etat, c'est le succes, on le reconnait
surtout a ce signe, qu'il reussit." One of Machiavelli's gravest critics
applied it to him: "Die ewige Aufgabe der Politik bleibt unter den
gegebenen Verhaeltnissen und mit den vorhandenen Mitteln etwas zu
erreichen. Eine Politik die das verkennt, die auf den Erfolg verzichtet,
sich auf eine theoretische Propaganda, auf ideale Gesichtspunkte
beschraenkt, von einer verlorenen Gegenwart an eine kuenftige
Gerechtigkeit appellirt, ist keine Politik mehr." One of the mediaeval
pioneers, Stenzel, delivered a formula of purest Tuscan cinquecento:
"Was bei anderen Menschen gemeine Schlechtigkeit ist, erhaelt, bei den
ungewoehnlichen Geistern, den Stempel der Groesse, der selbst dem
Verbrechen sich aufdrueckt. Der Maassstab ist anders; denn das
Ausserordentliche laesst sich nur durch Ausserordentliches bewirken."
Treitschke habitually denounces the impotent Doctrinaires who do not
understand "dass der Staat Macht ist und der Welt des Willens angehoert,"
and who know not how to rise "von der Politik des Bekenntnisses zu der
Politik der That." Schaefer, though a less pronounced partisan, derides
Macaulay for thinking that human happiness concerns political science:
"Das Wesen des Staates ist die Macht, und die Politik die Kunst ihn zu
erhalten." Rochau's _Realpolitik_ was a treatise in two volumes written
to prove "dass der Staat durch seine Selbsterhaltung das oberste Gebot
der Sittlichkeit erfuellt." Wherefore, nobody finds fault when a State in
its decline is subjugated by a robust neighbour. In one of those telling
passages which moved Mr. Freeman to complain that he seems unable to
understand that a small State can have any rights, or that a generous or
patriotic sentiment can find a place anywhere except in the breast of a
fool, Mommsen justifies the Roman conquests: "Kraft des Gesetzes dass
das zum Staat entwickelte Volk die politisch unmuendigen, das civilisirte
die geistig unmuendigen in sich aufloest." The same idea was imparted into
the theory of ethics by Kirchmann, and appears, with a sobering touch,
in the _Geschichte Jesu_ of Hase, the most popular German divine: "Der
Einzelne wird nach der Groesse seiner Ziele, nach den Wirkungen seiner
Thaten fuer das Wohl der Voelker gemessen, aber nicht nach dem Maasse der
Moral und des Rechts.--Vom Leben im Geiste seiner Zeit haengt nicht der
sittliche Werth eines Menschen, aber seine geschichtliche Wirksamkeit
ab." Ruemelin, both in politics and literature the most brilliant Suabian
of his time, and a strenuous adversary of Machiavelli, wrote thus in
1874: "Fuer den Einzelnen im Staat gilt das Princip der Selbsthingabe,
fuer den Staat das der Selbstbehauptung. Der Einzelne dient dem Recht;
der Staat handhabt, leitet und schafft dasselbe. Der Einzelne ist nur
ein fluechtiges Glied in dem sittlichen Ganzen; der Staat ist, wenn nicht
dieses Ganze selbst, doch dessen reale, ordnende Macht; er ist
unsterblich und sich selbst genug.--Die Erhaltung des Staats
rechtfertigt jedes Opfer und steht ueber jedem Gebot." Nefftzer, an
Alsatian borderer, says: "Le devoir supreme des individus est de se
devouer, celui des nations est de se conserver, et se confond par
consequent avec leur interet." Once, in a mood of pantheism, Renan
wrote: "L'humanite a tout fait, et, nous voulons le croire, tout bien
fait." Or, as Michelet abridges the _Scienza Nuova_: "L'humanite est son
oeuvre a elle-meme. Dieu agit sur elle, mais par elle." Mr. Leslie
Stephen thus lays down the philosophy of history according to Carlyle,
"that only succeeds which is based on divine truth, and permanent
success therefore proves the right, as the effect proves the cause."
Darwin, having met Carlyle, notes that "in his eyes might was right,"
and adds that he had a narrow and unscientific mind; but Mr. Goldwin
Smith discovers the same lesson: "History, of itself, if observed as
science observes the facts of the physical world, can scarcely give man
any principle or any object of allegiance, unless it be success." Dr.
Martineau attributes this doctrine to Mill: "Do we ask what determines
the moral quality of actions? We are referred, not to their spring, but
to their consequences." Jeremy Bentham used to relate how he found the
greatest happiness principle in 1768, and gave a shilling for it, at the
corner of Queen's College. He found it in Priestley, and he might have
gone on finding it in Beccaria and Hutcheson, all of whom trace their
pedigree to the _Mandragola_: "Io credo che quello sia bene che facci
bene a' piu, e che i piu se ne contentino." This is the centre of unity
in all Machiavelli, and gives him touch, not with unconscious imitators
only, but with the most conspicuous race of reasoners in the century.
English experience has not been familiar with a line of thought plainly
involving indulgence to Machiavelli. Dugald Stewart raises him high, but
raises him for a heavy fall: "No writer, certainly, either in ancient or
in modern times, has ever united, in a more remarkable degree, a greater
variety of the most dissimilar and seemingly the most discordant gifts
and attainments.--To his maxims the royal defenders of the Catholic
faith have been indebted for the spirit of that policy which they have
uniformly opposed to the innovations of the reformers." Hallam indeed
has said: "We continually find a more flagitious and undisguised
abandonment of moral rules for the sake of some idol of a general
principle than can be imputed to _The Prince_ of Machiavel." But the
unaccustomed hyperbole had been hazarded a century before in the
obscurity of a Latin dissertation by Feuerlein: "Longe detestabiliores
errores apud alios doctores politicos facile invenias, si eidem
rigorosae censurae eorum scripta subiicienda essent." What has been,
with us, the occasional aphorism of a masterful mind, encountered
support abroad in accredited systems, and in a vast and successful
political movement. The recovery of Machiavelli has been essentially the
product of causes operating on the Continent.
When Hegel was dominant to the Rhine, and Cousin beyond it, the
circumstances favoured his reputation. For Hegel taught: "Der Gang der
Weltgeschichte steht ausserhalb der Tugend, des Lasters, und der
Gerechtigkeit." And the great eclectic renewed, in explicit language,
the worst maxim of the _Istorie Fiorentine_: "L'apologie d'un siecle est
dans son existence, car son existence est un arret et un jugement de
Dieu meme, ou l'histoire n'est qu'une fastasmagorie insignifiante.--Le
caractere propre, le signe d'un grand homme, c'est qu'il reussit.--Ou
nul guerrier ne doit etre appele grand homme, ou, s'il est grand, il
faut l'absoudre, et absoudre en masse tout ce qu'il a fait.--Il faut
prouver que le vainqueur non seulement sert la civilisation, mais qu'il
est meilleur, plus moral, et que c'est pour cela qu'il est vainqueur.
Maudire la puissance (j'entends une puissance longue et durable) c'est
blasphemer l'humanite."
This primitive and everlasting problem assumed a peculiar shape in
theological controversy. The Catholic divines urged that prosperity is a
sign by which, even in the militant period, the true Church may be
known; coupling _Felicitas Temporalis illis collata qui ecclesiam
defenderunt_ with _Infelix exitus eorum qui ecclesiam oppugnant_. Le
Blanc de Beaulieu, a name famous in the history of pacific disputation,
holds the opposite opinion: "Crucem et perpessiones esse potius
ecclesiae notam, nam denunciatum piis in verbo Dei fore ut in hoc mundo
persecutionem patiantur, non vero ut armis sint adversariis suis
superiores." Renan, outbidding all, finds that honesty is the worst
policy: "En general, dans l'histoire, l'homme est puni de ce qu'il fait
de bien, et recompensee de ce qu'il fait de mal.--L'histoire est tout le
contraire de la vertu recompensee."