Commonwealth, in accordance with a community of interest and a partnership in achieving. We should have the assurance that this more representative direction and control of foreign policy by a Council of the Empire would express the mind of a Commonwealth of peoples, and would be the informed check of mind upon mind. It would help to promote the collective responsibility of all civilized nations in upholding International Law and developing and safeguarding international morality. This it would do without relaxing its grip on the solid truth that there is only one effective way of resisting wrong done by force, or of warding off wrong threatened by force: there must be the means, and there must be readiness, to exert force on the side of right and justice.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES
A. ANTI-MACHIAVEL LITERATURE
There is an abundant anti-Machiavel literature from an early date: see, in
Burd's edition (1891) of
Il Principe, the Introduction by
Acton and by the editor. In
Campanella's De Monarchia Hispanica (c. 5) sharp antitheses are drawn between
prudentia and
astutia. E.g. 'Prudentia clemens est, et verax: Astutia crudelis, et adulatrix. … Prudentia dum perdit, acquirit (id quod Petrus, et Papa adhuc hodie facit), et quanto penitius cognoscitur tanto ardentius a suis amatur. Astutia dum acquirit, perdit; et quanto magis nota est, tanto magis odio habetur. Sicut videre est in scelesti illius Machiavelli discipulo Caesare Borgia, qui per astutias suas principatum Flaminiae (hodie Romaniae) perdidit.'—
De Mon. Hisp., ed. 1641, 24–5. More significant are the favourable, or not adverse, interpreters of Machiavelli. To
Alberico Gentili,
De legationibus libri tres (1585), iii. 9, quoted by Burd, op. cit. 63, Machiavelli is 'Democratiae laudator et assertor acerrimus; natus, educatus, honoratus, in eo reipublicae statu; tyrannidis summe inimicus. Itaque tyranno non favet: sui propositi non est, tyrannum instruere, sed arcanis cius palam factis ipsum miseris
