State wherein impeachment is least practised, and the laws least
favour it. For which reasons the legislator should so shape the laws
of his State that it shall be possible therein to impeach any of its
citizens without fear or favour; and, after duly providing for this,
should visit calumniators with the sharpest punishments. Those punished
will have no cause to complain, since it was in their power to have
impeached openly where they have secretly calumniated. Where this is not
seen to, grave disorders will always ensue. For calumnies sting without
disabling; and those who are stung being more moved by hatred of their
detractors than by fear of the things they say against them, seek
revenge.

This matter, as we have said, was well arranged for in Rome, but has
always been badly regulated in our city of Florence. And as the Roman
ordinances with regard to it were productive of much good, so the want
of them in Florence has bred much mischief. For any one reading the
history of our city may perceive, how many calumnies have at all times
been aimed against those of its citizens who have taken a leading part
in its affairs. Thus, of one it would be said that he had plundered
the public treasury, of another, that he had failed in some enterprise
because he had been bribed; of a third, that this or the other disaster
had originated in his ambition. Hence hatred sprung up on every side,
and hatred growing to division, these led to factions, and these again
to ruin. But had there existed in Florence some procedure whereby
citizens might have been impeached, and calumniators punished,
numberless disorders which have taken there would have been prevented.
For citizens who were impeached, whether condemned or acquitted,
would have had no power to injure the State; and they would have been
impeached far seldomer than they have been calumniated; for calumny, as
I have said already, is an easier matter than impeachment.

Some, indeed, have made use of calumny as a means for raising themselves
to power, and have found their advantage in traducing eminent citizens
who withstood their designs; for by taking the part of the people, and
confirming them in their ill-opinion of these great men, they made them
their friends. Of this, though I could give many instances, I shall
content myself with one. At the siege of Lucca the Florentine army was
commanded by Messer Giovanni Guicciardini, as its commissary, through
whose bad generalship