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THE PRINCE.

CHAP III.

Of Mixed Principalities.

It is in anew principality that difficulties are found ; and in the first place, if it is not entirely new, but an incorporated member of another sovereignty, or what we may distinguish by the appellation of a mixed principality, its changes are created by the difficulties which new principalities naturally experience. Now, in these, the subjects voluntarily change their masters, believing that they will gain by the change; this opinion makes them take arms against the existing government. They find themselves, however, mistaken in this object, and soon perceive that they have only rendered their situation worse. This mischievous result is a natural and necessary consequence of the very change which they have experienced. In fact, every new prince is compelled more or less to displease his new subjects, whether it be by the presence of the soldiers which he is under the necessity of retaining, or by an infinity of other evils which a new acquisition natu- rally draws after it; so that he has all those for enemies, whom, by occupying the principality, he