int adversariis suis
superiores." Renan, outbidding all, finds that honesty is the worst
policy: "En general, dans l'histoire, l'homme est puni de ce qu'il fait
de bien, et recompensee de ce qu'il fait de mal.--L'histoire est tout le
contraire de la vertu recompensee."

The national movement which united, first Italy and then Germany, opened
a new era for Machiavelli. He had come down, laden with the distinctive
reproach of abetting despotism; and the men who, in the seventeenth
century, levelled the course of absolute monarchy, were commonly known
as _novi politici et Machiavellistae_. In the days of Grotius they are
denounced by Besold: "Novi politici, ex Italia redeuntes qui quavis
fraude principibus a subditis pecuniam extorquere fas licitumque esse
putant, Machiavelli plerumque praeceptis et exemplis principum, quorum
rationes non capiunt, ad id abutentes." But the immediate purpose with
which Italians and Germans effected the great change in the European
constitution was unity, not liberty. They constructed, not securities,
but forces. Machiavelli's time had come. The problems once more were his
own: and in many forward and resolute minds the spirit also was his, and
displayed itself in an ascending scale of praise. He was simply a
faithful observer of facts, who described the fell necessity that
governs narrow territories and unstable fortunes; he discovered the true
line of progress and the law of future society; he was a patriot, a
republican, a Liberal, but above all this, a man sagacious enough to
know that politics is an inductive science. A sublime purpose justifies
him, and he has been wronged by dupes and fanatics, by irresponsible
dreamers and interested hypocrites.

The Italian Revolution, passing from the Liberal to the national stage,
at once adopted his name and placed itself under his invocation. Count
Sclopis, though he declared him _Penseur profond, ecrivain admirable_,
deplored this untimely preference: "Il m'a ete penible de voir le
gouvernement provisoire de la Tuscane, en 1859, le lendemain du jour ou
ce pays recouvrait sa liberte, publier un decret, portant qu'une edition
complete des oeuvres de Machiavel serait faite aux frais de l'etat." The
research even of our best masters, Villari and Tommasini, is prompted by
admiration. Ferrari, who comes so near him in many qualities of the
intellect, proclaims him the recorder of fate: "Il decrit les roles que
la fatalite distribue aux individus et