udgment on the moral value of individual conduct;
the same keen decision of its practical effect as a political act. But
here more than in _The Prince_, he deals with the action and conduct of
the people. With his passion for personal and contemporary incarnation
he finds in the Swiss of his day the Romans of Republican Rome, and
reiterates the comparison in detail. Feudalism, mercenaries, political
associations embodied in Arts and Guilds, the Temporal power of the
Church, all these are put away, and in their stead he announces the new
and daring gospel that for organic unity subjects must be treated as
equals and not as inferiors. 'Trust the people' is a maxim he repeats
and enforces again and again. And he does not shrink from, but rather
urges the corollary, 'Arm the people.' Indeed it were no audacious
paradox to state the ideal of Machiavelli, though he nominally preferred
a Republic, as a Limited Monarchy, ruling over a Nation in Arms. No
doubt he sought, as was natural enough in his day, to construct the
State from without rather than to guide and encourage its evolution from
within. It seemed to him that, in such an ocean of corruption, Force
_was_ a remedy and Fraud no sluttish handmaid. 'Vice n'est-ce pas,'
writes Montaigne, of such violent acts of Government, 'car il a quitte
sa raison a une plus universelle et puissante raison.' Even so the
Prince and the people could only be justified by results. But the public
life is of larger value than the private, and sometimes one man must be
crucified for a thousand. Despite all prejudice and make-belief, such a
rule and practice has obtained from the Assemblies of Athens to the
Parliaments of the twentieth century. But Machiavelli first candidly
imparted it to the unwilling consciences and brains of men, and it is he
who has been the chosen scape-goat to carry the sins of the people. His
earnestness makes him belie his own precept to keep the name and take
away the thing. In this, as in a thousand instances, he was not too
darkly hidden; he was too plain. 'Machiavelli,' says one who studied the
Florentine as hardly another had done, 'Machiavelli hat gesuendigt, aber
noch mehr ist gegen ihn gesuendigt worden.' Liberty is good, but Unity is
its only sure foundation. It is the way to the Unity of Government and
People that the thoughts both of _The Prince_ and the _Discorsi_ lead,
though the incidents be so nakedly presented as to shock the timorous
and vex the prurient