THE PRINCE

BY

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY

LUIGI RICCI

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW
NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPETOWN
BOMBAY CALCUTTA AND MADRAS

1909

PREFACE

Of all Machiavelli's works The Prince is undoubtedly the greatest;and a new English edition of it is likely to be welcome to all thosewho have not the advantage of reading it in the classical Italianoriginal.

For a true appreciation of Machiavelli, impossible in a brief Preface,I must refer the English reader to Macaulay's Essay on the Italianhistorian and statesman.[1] In it he will see how our Author's ideas andwork were wrongfully and wilfully misinterpreted by the very men who,while profiting by his wisdom, have with great ingratitude criticisedthe statesman and defamed his name, as that of the inventor of theworst political system ever imagined. Yet, as his whole life was anindefatigable and unremitting endeavour to secure for his nativeFlorence a good and popular government, and as he lost his great officeof Secretary to the Florentine Republic on account of his avowedliberal opinions, it is not only unjust but ridiculous to accuse him ofhelping tyrants to enslave the people. What he did was to show in themost deliberate and in the plainest way the arts by which free peopleswere made slaves; and, had his words of advice been always heeded, notyrant in Italy or elsewhere could have been successful in his policy.That he was not listened to, and his advice scorned and spurned, wasnot Machiavelli's fault.

Those who still share the opinion of his interested detractors shouldread his private correspondence with the leaders of liberal ideasin Italy—many of his letters being still left unpublished in theMS. Collection of Giuliano Ricci in the National Library, in theRiccardiana Library (No. 2467), in the Government Archives (Strozzi,Nos. 133 and 1028) of Florence, in the Barberini Library, and in theCollezione Gonnelli of the Palatine Library in Rome.

LUIGI RICCI.

22 ALBEMARLE STREET,
LONDON, W.

CONTENTS

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI TO LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT

Chapter

1. The various kinds of Government and the ways by which they areestablished.

2. Of Hereditary Monarchies.

3. Of Mixed Monarchies.

4. Why the Kingdom of Darius, occupied by Alexander, did not rebelagainst the successors of the latter after his death.

5. The way to govern Cities or Dominions that, previous to beingoccupied, lived under their own Laws.

6. Of New Dominions which have been acquired by one's own Arms andPowers.

7. Of New Dominions acquired by the Power of others or by Fortune.

...

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