have disgraced our annals. Now "they manage these things much better in France," for Buonaparte never ceases to preach good faith, and that in so plausible a manner, as even to persuade his victims they ought to suffer, and he makes the maxim of Livy entirely his own. Inter arma silent leges. Parum tuta est sine viribus majestas; and having learnt of Machiavelli, that if he succeeds, his measures will always appear honourable, and be praised by all; as the vulgar are dazzled by appearances, and judge only by the event, he never troubles himself about the opinion of moralists, or the anger of his enemies.
If the reader will attentively compare the whole of this chapter with the conduct of Buonaparte, he will find a strict parallel between them:
Our author completes his character of the Prince by this maxim, that he ought carefully to avoid every thing which can make him despised or hated. Fugere in effectu contemptum et odium. For, as he observes, in in a letter to Leo the Xth, "if he does not
