discussed the _Discorsi_. Nominally
mere considerations upon the First Decade of Livy, they rapidly
encircled all that was known and thought of policy and state-craft, old
and living.

[Sidenote: Their Plan.]

Written concurrently with _The Prince_, though completed later, the
_Discorsi_ contain almost the whole of the thoughts and intents of the
more famous book, but with a slightly different application. '_The
Prince_ traces the progress of an ambitious man, the _Discorsi_ the
progress of an ambitious people,' is an apt if inadequate criticism.
Machiavelli was not the first Italian who thought and wrote upon the
problems of his time. But he was the first who discussed grave questions
in modern language. He was the first modern political writer who wrote
of men and not of man, for the Prince himself is a collective
individuality.

'This must be regarded as a general rule,' is ever in Machiavelli's
mouth, while Guicciardini finds no value in a general rule, but only in
'long experience and worthy discretion.' The one treated of policy, the
other of politics. Guicciardini considered specifically by what methods
to control and arrange an existing Government. Machiavelli sought to
create a science, which should show how to establish, maintain, and
hinder the decline of states generally conceived. Even Cavour counted
the former as a more practical guide in affairs. But Machiavelli was the
theorist of humanity in politics, not the observer only. He
distinguished the two orders of research. And, during the Italian
Renaissance such distinction was supremely necessary. With a crumbled
theology, a pagan Pope, amid the wreck of laws and the confusion of
social order, _il sue particolare_ and _virtu_, individuality and
ability (energy, political genius, prowess, vital force: _virtu_ is
impossible to translate, and only does not mean virtue), were the
dominating and unrelenting factors of life. Niccolo Machiavelli, unlike
Montesquieu, agreed with Martin Luther that man was bad. It was for both
the Wittenberger and the Florentine, in their very separate ways, to
found the school and wield the scourge. In the naked and unashamed
candour of the time Guicciardini could say that he loathed the Papacy
and all its works. 'For all that, he adds, 'the preferments I have
enjoyed, have forced me for my private ends to set my heart upon papal
greatness. Were it not for this consideration, I should love Martin
Luther as my second self.' In