hould be introduced, his only inquiry being whether it
will accomplish his intention. As to any happiness or misery it may
work, he gives himself no concern, unless, indeed, they evidently ought
to enter into the calculation. He had suffered the rack himself under a
charge of conspiracy, and borne it without flinching. But, before
Machiavelli wrote, his principles had all been carried into practice;
indeed, it would not be difficult to give abundant examples in proof of
the assertion that they had been for ages regarded in Italy as rules of
conduct.

[Sidenote: Conjoined effect of the intellectual and moral impulses.]
Such was the morality which Europe detected as existing in Italy,
carried out with inconceivable wickedness in public and private life;
and thus the two causes we have been considering--contact with the
Saracens in Syria and a knowledge of the real state of things in
Rome--conspired together to produce what may be designated as the moral
impulse, which, in its turn, conspired with the intellectual. Their
association foreboded evil to ecclesiastical authority, thus taken at
great disadvantage. Though, from its very birthday, that authority had
been in absolute opposition to the intellectual movement, it might,
doubtless, for a much longer time have successfully maintained its
conflict therewith had the conditions remained unchanged. Up to this
time its chief strength reposed upon its moral relations. It could
point, and did point the attention of those whose mental culture enabled
them to understand the true position of affairs, to Europe brought out
of barbarism, and beginning a course of glorious civilization. That
achievement was claimed by the Church. If it were true that she had thus
brought it to pass, it had been altogether wrought by the agency of her
moral power, intellectual influence in no manner aiding therein, but
being uniformly, from the time of Constantine the Great to that of the
Reformation, instinctively repulsed. When, now, the moral power suffered
so great a shock, and was not only ready to go over to, but had actually
allied itself with the intellectual, there was great danger to
ecclesiastical authority. And hence we need not be surprised that an
impression began to prevail among the clear-thinking men of the time
that the real functions of that authority were completed in producing
the partially-civilized condition to which Europe had attained, the
course of events tending evidently