Whatever the force or the law that may control this shifting distribution of imperial destinies, nothing, said Machiavelli, could prevent any native of Italy or of Greece, unless the Greek had turned Turk, or the Italian had turned Transalpine, from blaming his own time, and praising the glories of time past. 'What,' he cries, 'can redeem an age from the extremity of misery, shame, reproach, where there is no regard to religion, to laws, to arms, where all is tainted and tarnished with every foulness. And these vices are all the more hateful, as they most abound in those who sit in the judgment-seat, are men's masters, and seek men's reverence. I, at all events,' he concludes, with a glow so rare in him, that almost recalls the moving close of the Agricola, 'shall make bold to say how I regard old times and new, so that the minds of the young, who shall read these writings of mine, may shun the new examples and follow the old. For it is the duty of a good man, at least to strive to teach to others those sound lessons, which the spite of time or fortune hath hindered him from executing, to the end that many having learned them, some one of those better loved by heaven may one day have power to apply them.'
What were the lessons? They were in fact only one, that the central secret of the ruin and distraction of Italy was weakness of will, want of fortitude, force, and resolution. The abstract question of the best form of government—perhaps the most barren of all the topics that have ever occupied speculative
