to be--and are ruined. In politics there are no perfectly safe courses;
prudence consists in choosing the least dangerous ones. Then--to pass to
a higher plane--Machiavelli reiterates that, although crimes may win
an empire, they do not win glory. Necessary wars are just wars, and
the arms of a nation are hallowed when it has no other resource but to
fight.

It is the cry of a far later day than Machiavelli's that government
should be elevated into a living moral force, capable of inspiring the
people with a just recognition of the fundamental principles of society;
to this "high argument" "The Prince" contributes but little. Machiavelli
always refused to write either of men or of governments otherwise than
as he found them, and he writes with such skill and insight that his
work is of abiding value. But what invests "The Prince" with more than
a merely artistic or historical interest is the incontrovertible truth
that it deals with the great principles which still guide nations and
rulers in their relationship with each other and their neighbours.

In translating "The Prince" my aim has been to achieve at all costs an
exact literal rendering of the original, rather than a fluent paraphrase
adapted to the modern notions of style and expression. Machiavelli was
no facile phrasemonger; the conditions under which he wrote obliged him
to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his substance grave, his
manner nobly plain and serious. "Quis eo fuit unquam in partiundis
rebus, in definiendis, in explanandis pressior?" In "The Prince," it may
be truly said, there is reason assignable, not only for every word, but
for the position of every word. To an Englishman of Shakespeare's time
the translation of such a treatise was in some ways a comparatively easy
task, for in those times the genius of the English more nearly resembled
that of the Italian language; to the Englishman of to-day it is not so