English experience has not been familiar with a line of thought plainly involving indulgence to Machiavelli. Dugald Stewart raises him high, but raises him for a heavy fall: "No writer, certainly, either in ancient or in modern times, has ever united, in a more remarkable degree, a greater variety of the most dissimilar and seemingly the most discordant gifts and attainments.- To his maxims the royal defenders of the Catholic faith have been indebted for the spirit of that policy which they have uniformly opposed to the innovations of the reformers." Hallam indeed has said: " We continually find a more flagitious and undisguised abandonment of moral rules for the sake of some idol of a general principle than can be imputed to TIle Prince of Machiavel." But the unaccustomed hyperbole had been hazarded a century before in the obscurity of a Latin dissertation by Feuerlein: "Longe detestabiliores errores apud alios doctores politicos facile invenias, si eidem rigorosae censurae eorum scripta subiicienda essent." What has been, with us, the occasional aphorism of a masterful mind, encountered support abroad in accredited systems, and in a vast and successful political movement. The recovery of Machiavelli has been essentially the product of causes operating on the Continent.
When Hegel was dominant to the Rhine, and Cousin beyond it, the circumstances favoured his reputation. For Hegel taught: "Der Gang der Weltgeschichte steht ausserhalb der Tugend, des Lasters, und der Gerechtigkeit." And the great eclectic renewed, in explicit language, the worst maxim of the Istorie FiorentÙze: "L'apologie d'un siècle est dans son existence, car son existence est un arrêt et un jugement de Dieu mêlne, ou l'histoire n'est qu'une fastasmagorie insignifiante.-Le caractère propre, Ie signe d'un grand homme, c'est qu'il réussit.-Ou nul guerrier ne doit être appelé grand homme, ou, s'il est grand, il faut l'absoudre, et absoudre en masse tout ce qu'il a fait.-II faut prouver que Ie vainqueur non seulement sert la civilisation, mais qu'il est meilleur, plus moral, et que c'est pour cela qu'il est vainqueur. Maudire la puissance
