the Romagna, the theatre of Cæsar Borgia's exploits—he would have been much more earnest in pressing it upon their attention. If, on the other hand, satire had been his chief object, this would have been more mordant and poignant; his power of contemptuous irony is only revealed in the short chapter on the Papal monarchy. His aim probably was to show how to build up a principality capable of expelling the foreigner and restoring the independence of Italy. But this intention could not be safely expressed, and hence his work seems repulsive, because the reason of state which he propounds as an apology for infringing the moral code appears not patriotic, but purely selfish.
In our day we have seen Italian independence won by appeals to the patriotism of the nation at large. This was impossible in Machiavelli's time; nor, had it been otherwise, would his lips have been touched with the live coal of a Mazzini. He could only speak as a politician to politicians, and addressing himself as it were to a body of scientific experts, he designedly excludes all considerations of morality. His treatise appears antiquated in our day, when the national conscience is as easily manipulated as the conscience of the individual; in oligarchical ages it passed not unreasonably for a perfect manual of statecraft, and exercised great influence upon the statesmen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Frederick the Great assailed it vehemently in his youth, but lived to compliment it by what has been described as the sincerest form of flattery. In Frederick's century, when public affairs actually were in the hands of a few able rulers, it was worth attacking and defending; in the present democratic age, when a statesman who squared his conduct by its maxims would soon find himself the
