would have been contented to translate and sign, Guicciardini shows no
passion. The Medici were only acting as befitted princes eager for
power, although they crushed the spirit of the people, discouraged
political ardor, extinguished military zeal, and did all that in them
lay to enervate the nation they governed. The scientific statist
acknowledges no reciprocal rights and duties between the governor and
the governed. It is a trial of strength. If the tyrant gets the upper
hand, the people must expect to be oppressed. If, on the other side, the
people triumph, they must take good care to exterminate the despotic
brood: 'The one true remedy would be to destroy and extinguish them so
utterly that not a vestige should remain, and to employ for this purpose
the poignard or poison, as may be most convenient; otherwise the least
surviving spark is certain to cause trouble and annoyance for the
future'(p. 215). The same precise criticism lays bare the weakness of
democracy. Men, says Guicciardini, always really desire their own power
more than the freedom of the state (p. 50), and the motives even of
tyrannicides are very rarely pure (pp. 53-54). The governments
established by the liberals are full of defects. The Consiglio Grande,
for example, of the Florentines is ignorant in its choice of
magistrates, unjust in its apportionment of taxes, scarcely less
prejudiced against individuals than a tyrant would be, and incapable of
diplomatic foreign policy (pp. 58-69). Then follows a discussion of the
relative merits of the three chief forms of government--the Governo
dell' Uno, the Governo degli Ottimati, and the Governo del Popolo (p.
129). Guicciardini has already criticised the first and the third.[1] He
now expresses a strong opinion that the second is the worst which could
be applied to the actual conditions of the Florentine Republic (p. 130).
His panegyric of the Venetian constitution (pp. 139-41) illustrates his
plan for combining the advantages of the three species and obviating
their respective evils. In fact he declares for that Utopia of the