Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2   By: Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay (1800-1859)

CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS, VOLUME II

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

FOREIGN HISTORY

MACHIAVELLI RANKE'S HISTORY OF THE POPES WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION FREDERIC THE GREAT

POLITICAL CONTROVERSY

SOUTHEY'S COLLOQUIES CIVIL DISABILTIES OF THE JEWS GLADSTONE ON CHURCH AND STATE

LITERARY CRITICISMS

BACON JOHN BUNYAN DRAMATISTS OF THE RESTORATION ADDISON SAMUEL JOHNSON MADAME D'ARBLAY BYRON MONTGOMERY

INDEX

MACHIAVELLI (March 1827)

Oeuvres completes de MACHIAVEL, traduites par J. V. PERIER Paris: 1825.

Those who have attended to the practice of our literary tribunal are well aware that, by means of certain legal fictions similar to those of Westminster Hall, we are frequently enabled to take cognisance of cases lying beyond the sphere of our original jurisdiction. We need hardly say, therefore, that in the present instance M. Perier is merely a Richard Roe, who will not be mentioned in any subsequent stage of the proceedings, and whose name is used for the sole purpose of bringing Machiavelli into court.

We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider. The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original inventor of perjury, and that, before the publication of his fatal Prince, there had never been a hypocrite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a convenient crime. One writer gravely assures us that Maurice of Saxony learned all his fraudulent policy from that execrable volume. Another remarks that since it was translated into Turkish, the Sultans have been more addicted than formerly to the custom of strangling their brothers. Lord Lyttelton charges the poor Florentine with the manifold treasons of the house of Guise, and with the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Several authors have hinted that the Gunpowder Plot is to be primarily attributed to his doctrines, and seem to think that his effigy ought to be substituted for that of Guy Faux, in those processions by which the ingenious youth of England annually commemorate the preservation of the Three Estates. The Church of Rome has pronounced his works accursed things. Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.

[Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick, Tho' he gave his name to our old Nick.

Hudibras, Part iii. Canto i.

But, we believe, there is a schism on this subject among the antiquarians.]

It is indeed scarcely possible for any person, not well acquainted with the history and literature of Italy, to read without horror and amazement the celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the name of Machiavelli. Such a display of wickedness, naked yet not ashamed, such cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men. Principles which the most hardened ruffian would scarcely hint to his most trusted accomplice, or avow, without the disguise of some palliating sophism, even to his own mind, are professed without the slightest circumlocution, and assumed as the fundamental axioms of all political science.