as indomitable lawlessness and perfect depravity were thoroughly
engrained in them.'

Yet after the book has been shut and the apology has been weighed, we
cannot but pause and ask ourselves this question, Which was the truer
patriot--Machiavelli, systematizing the political vices and corruptions
of his time in a philosophical essay, and calling on the despot to whom
it was dedicated to liberate Italy; or Savonarola, denouncing sin and
enforcing repentance--Machiavelli, who taught as precepts of pure wisdom
those very principles of public immorality which lay at the root of
Italy's disunion and weakness; or Savonarola, who insisted that without
a moral reformation no liberty was possible? We shall have to consider
the action of Savonarola in another place. Meanwhile, it is not too much
to affirm that, with diplomatists like Machiavelli, and with princes
like those whom he has idealized, Italy could not be free. Hypocrisy,
treachery, dissimulation, cruelty are the vices of the selfish and the
enslaved. Yet Machiavelli was led by his study of the past and by his
experience of the present to defend these vices, as the necessary
qualities of the prince whom he would fain have chosen for the saviour
of his country. It is legitimate to excuse him on the ground that the
Italians of his age had not conceived a philosophy of right which should
include duties as well as privileges, and which should guard the
interests of the governed no less than those of the governor. It is true
that the feudal conception of Monarchy, so well apprehended by him in
the fourth chapter of the _Principe,_ had nowhere been realized in
Italy, and that therefore the right solution of the political problem
seemed to lie in setting force against force, and fraud against fraud,
for a sublime purpose. It may also be urged with justice that the
historians and speculators of antiquity, esteemed beyond their value by
the students of the sixteenth century, confirmed him in his application