meet What gates would be closed against him? What people would refuse
him allegiance? What jealousy would thwart him? What Italian would be
found to refuse him homage? This rule of the barbarians stinks in the
nostrils of us all. Then let your illustrious House assume this
enterprise in the spirit and the confidence wherewith just enterprises
are begun, that so, under your flag, this land of ours may be ennobled,
and under your auspices be brought to pass that prophecy of Petrarch:--

'Lo, valor against rage
Shall take up arms, nor shall the fight be long;
For that old heritage
Of courage in Italian hearts is stout and strong.

With this trumpet-cry of impassioned patriotism the
_Principe_ closes.

Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History,' has recorded a judgment of
Machiavelli's treatise in relation to the political conditions of Italy
at the end of the mediaeval period, which might be quoted as the most
complete apology for the author it is possible to make. 'This book,' he
says, 'has often been cast aside with horror as containing maxims of the
most revolting tyranny; yet it was Machiavelli's high sense of the
necessity of constituting a state which caused him to lay down the
principles on which alone states could be formed under the
circumstances. The isolated lords and lordships had to be entirely
suppressed; and though our idea of Freedom is incompatible with the
means which he proposes both as the only available and also as wholly
justifiable--including, as these do, the most reckless violence, all
kinds of deception, murder, and the like--yet we must confess that the
despots who had to be subdued were assailable in no other way, inasmuch