Niccolo Machiavelli

This greatest of Florentine statesmen was born in Florence in 1469, of an ancient though not wealthy family.

He was through life a zealous Republican, and suffered imprisonment and torture in the cause of liberty.

In 1532, after the death of Machiavelli, was published the book which has clothed his name with obloquy. "The Prince" was not written for publication, but for the private study of the Medici, and to commend Machiavelli to them by proving how thoroughly he was master of the art and craft of Italian statesmanship, which was exhibited in the absolute and tyrannical rule of the Prince over the people.

"The Prince" was published under the sanction of Pope Clement VII.; but a few years later, at the Council of Trent, it was accounted "an accursed book." It is a code of policy; yet honesty, as the best policy, was unknown to a diplomatist of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Hence, to be a "true disciple of Machiavelli," is an epithet for a knave; and Butler says in "Hudibras,"--