ry rarely pure (pp. 53-54). The governments
established by the liberals are full of defects. The Consiglio Grande,
for example, of the Florentines is ignorant in its choice of
magistrates, unjust in its apportionment of taxes, scarcely less
prejudiced against individuals than a tyrant would be, and incapable of
diplomatic foreign policy (pp. 58-69). Then follows a discussion of the
relative merits of the three chief forms of government--the Governo
dell' Uno, the Governo degli Ottimati, and the Governo del Popolo (p.
129). Guicciardini has already criticised the first and the third.[1] He
now expresses a strong opinion that the second is the worst which could
be applied to the actual conditions of the Florentine Republic (p. 130).
His panegyric of the Venetian constitution (pp. 139-41) illustrates his
plan for combining the advantages of the three species and obviating
their respective evils. In fact he declares for that Utopia of the
sixteenth century--the Governo Misto--a political invention which
fascinated the imagination of Italian statesmen much in the same way as
the theory of perpetual motion attracted scientific minds in the last
century.[2] What follows is an elaborate scheme for applying the
principles of the Governo Misto to the existing state of things in
Florence. This lucid and learned disquisition is wound up (p. 188) with
a mournful expression of the doubt which hung like a thick cloud over
all the political speculations of both Guicciardini and Machiavelli: 'I
hold it very doubtful, and I think it much depends on chance whether
this disorganized constitution will ever take new shape or not ... and
as I said yesterday, I should have more hope if the city were but young;
seeing that not only does a state at the commencement take form with
greater facility than one that has grown old under evil governments, but
things always turn out more prosperously and more easily while fortune
is yet fresh and has not run its course,' etc.[3] In reading the
Dialogue on the Constitution of Florence it must finally be remembered
that Guicciardini has thrown it back into the year 1494, and that he
speaks through the mouths of four interlocutors. Therefore we may
presume that he intended his readers to regard it as a work of
speculative science rather than of practical political philosophy. Yet
it is not difficult to gather the drift of his own meaning.

[1] Cf. _Ricordi_, cxl.: 'Chi disse uno popolo, disse veramente