were faithful continue to be so, and the whole of his people become his partisans.
It is unquestionably impossible to arm every one; but the prince who knows how to attach to him those whom he arms, has nothing to fear from the others. The first become attached to him on account of the preference, and the others readily excuse him, because they naturally imagine that the greatest merit is due to those who run the greatest dangers. But a prince who disarms his subjects offends them by the distrust they think he entertains of them, and nothing is more likely to excite their hatred. Added to which, such a measure renders it necessary that he should have recourse to mercenaries, the dangers of which I have at sufficient length elucidated. Besides, were not this resource liable to inconvenience, it would always be inefficient against a powerful enemy and subjects liable to be suspected.
Thus it has eyer been a maxim with those who have raised themselves to supreme magistracy to arm their new subjects. If it be, however, necessary to unite a new state with ane that is ancient or hereditary, the prince should then disarm his new subjects, those always excepted who had declared in his favour antecedent to his conquest; and it would still behove him by degrees to soften and enervate them, so as to concentrate in the old stațe his whole milițary force.
