The Prince
By
Nicolo Machiavelli
Nicolo Machiavelli, born at Florence on 3rd May 1469. From 1494 to 1512
held an official post at Florence which included diplomatic missions to
various European courts. Imprisoned in Florence, 1512; later exiled and
returned to San Casciano. Died at Florence on 22nd June 1527.
CHAPTER XVII —
CONCERNING CRUELTY AND
CLEMENCY, AND WHETHER IT
IS BETTER TO BE LOVED THAN
FEARED
Coming now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to
desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not
to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his
cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if
this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the
Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, permitted Pistoia to be
destroyed.(*) Therefore a prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal,
ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more
merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which
follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people, whilst those
executions which originate with a prince offend the individual only.
(*) During the rioting between the Cancellieri and
Panciatichi factions in 1502 and 1503.
And of all princes, it is impossible for the new prince to avoid the imputation of cruelty,
owing to new states being full of dangers. Hence Virgil, through the mouth of Dido,
excuses the inhumanity of her reign owing to its being new, saying:
"Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt
Moliri, et late fines custode tueri."(*)
Nevertheless he ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show
fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much
confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable.
(*) . . . against my will, my fate
A throne unsettled, and an infant state,
Bid me defend my realms with all my pow'rs,
And guard with these severities my shores.
Christopher Pitt.
Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared
than loved? It may be answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is
difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of
the two, either must be dispensed with. Because this is to be asserted in general of
men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you
succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and
children, as is said above, when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they
turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected
other precautions, is ruined; because friendships that are obtained by payments, and
not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured,
and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one
who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation
which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage;
but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.
Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love,
he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated,
which will always be as long as he abstains from the property of his citizens and
subjects and from their women. But when it is necessary for him to proceed against the
life of someone, he must do it on proper justification and for manifest cause, but above
all things he must keep his hands off the property of others, because men more quickly
forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Besides, pretexts for
taking away the property are never wanting; for he who has once begun to live by
robbery will always find pretexts for seizing what belongs to others; but reasons for
taking life, on the contrary, are more difficult to find and sooner lapse. But when a prince
is with his army, and has under control a multitude of soldiers, then it is quite necessary
for him to disregard the reputation of cruelty, for without it he would never hold his army
united or disposed to its duties.
Among the wonderful deeds of Hannibal this one is enumerated: that having led an
enormous army, composed of many various races of men, to fight in foreign lands, no
dissensions arose either among them or against the prince, whether in his bad or in his
good fortune. This arose from nothing else than his inhuman cruelty, which, with his
boundless valour, made him revered and terrible in the sight of his soldiers, but without
that cruelty, his other virtues were not sufficient to produce this effect. And short-sighted
writers admire his deeds from one point of view and from another condemn the principal
cause of them. That it is true his other virtues would not have been sufficient for him
may be proved by the case of Scipio, that most excellent man, not only of his own times
but within the memory of man, against whom, nevertheless, his army rebelled in Spain;
this arose from nothing but his too great forbearance, which gave his soldiers more
license than is consistent with military discipline. For this he was upbraided in the
Senate by Fabius Maximus, and called the corrupter of the Roman soldiery. The
Locrians were laid waste by a legate of Scipio, yet they were not avenged by him, nor
was the insolence of the legate punished, owing entirely to his easy nature. Insomuch
that someone in the Senate, wishing to excuse him, said there were many men who
knew much better how not to err than to correct the errors of others. This disposition, if
he had been continued in the command, would have destroyed in time the fame and
glory of Scipio; but, he being under the control of the Senate, this injurious characteristic
not only concealed itself, but contributed to his glory.
Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the conclusion that, men
loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise
prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of
others; he must endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.
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Bill, Meet Niccolo
By Michael Barone
Posted 9/10/95
As Bill Clinton looks ahead to conflicts with Congress on the budget and with the Serbs in
Bosnia, one might well ask: How does he measure up as a leader according to that expert on
American politics, Niccolo Machiavelli? Machiavelli never saw America, but The Prince, his
landmark discourse on political science, remains a manual for rulers, which is to say every
American president.
President Clinton, however, is almost precisely the opposite of Machiavelli's ideal Prince in
every regard. Begin with Machiavelli's central question, "whether it is better to be loved or
feared." Classical and medieval commentators assumed it is better to be loved. Machiavelli had
a cooler eye. "It is much safer to be feared than loved," he wrote. "Men have less hesitation to
offend one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared; for love is held by a
chain of obligation, which, because men are wicked, is broken at every opportunity for their own
utility, but fear is held by a dread of punishment that never forsakes you." Clinton, of course,
thirsts to be loved and is probably less feared than any president in living memory.
Machiavelli also holds that it is better to have a reputation for stinginess than for generosity. A
ruler believed to be generous must "burden the people extraordinarily, to be rigorous with taxes,
and to do all those things that can be done to get money." People's expectations will never be
satisfied and their resentments will easily be aroused, which is what happened when candidate
Clinton promised a middle-class tax cut and incumbent Clinton pushed through a middle-class
tax increase. Promises of benefits--a new national health care plan, job training programs,
college education loans--are heavily discounted while a prince with a reputation for stinginess
gets credit for the smallest generosity. "Above all, he must abstain from the property of others,
because men forget the death of a father more quickly than the loss of a patrimony." In English:
"Read my lips: no new taxes!"
Thoughts of war. But Machiavelli has an even higher priority. "A prince should have no other
object, nor any other thought, nor take anything else as his art but the art of war and its orders
and discipline," he writes. "He should never lift his thoughts from the exercise of war." Bill
Clinton, of course, is notoriously uninterested in things military. For years he forgot that he
received a draft notice while at Oxford; for months he was visibly uncomfortable saluting military
officers; he has had far fewer military and intelligence briefings than other recent presidents.
Even when he pays thoughtful and eloquent tribute to American servicemen and women, as he
did at Pearl Harbor on V-J Day, he can make an embarrassing mistake: In recalling the
Japanese surrender, he called the battleship Missouri an aircraft carrier.
Machiavelli warned against "flatterers of whom courts are full," and of seeking advice widely:
"When everyone can tell you the truth, they lack reverence for you." So a prince should keep
only a few close advisers and give them freedom to speak the truth only on subjects he asks
about. "He should ask them about everything and listen to their opinions; then he should decide
by himself, in his own mode. ... Aside from these, he should not want to hear [from] anyone; he
should move directly to the thing that was decided and be obstinate in his decisions. Whoever
does otherwise either falls headlong because of flatterers or changes often because of the
variability of views, from which a low estimation of him arises." As a bad example, he cites the
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. When his policies "begin to be contradicted by those who he
has around him, he, an agreeable person, is dissuaded from them. From this it arises that the
things he does on one day he destroys on another, that no one ever understands what he wants
or plans to do, and that one cannot found oneself on his decisions." Sound familiar?
Some White House advisers say we are now seeing a new Bill Clinton, disciplined and resolute,
steady and steely in his determination to stare down Congress and set back the Serbs.
Perhaps. But he is no longer a new prince and he has not established a reputation for
Machiavelli's virtu, which is not virtue as we conceive it today but the strength of character
"which enables him to achieve great works and deeds," as historian Felix Gilbert describes it.
One American president whose virtu enabled him to achieve his goals over the extremists of his
own party and the congressional leaders of the other was the seemingly guileless Dwight
Eisenhower who, as columnist Murray Kempton once said, "could learn nothing from Machiavelli
except to denounce Machiavelli." Bill Clinton, who is constantly proclaiming that he is not
playing politics, still has a lot to learn from The Prince.
This story appears in the September 18, 1995 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.