THE PORT FOLIO. VOL. VI. FOURTH SERIES. CONDUCTED BY OLIVER OLDSCHOOL, ESQ. Various; that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change And pleased with novelty, may be indulged.-Cowper. REFLECTIONS ON THE WRITINGS OF MACHIAVEL, "Est quod gratias agamus Machiavello et hujusmodi scriptoribus qui apèrte et indissimulanter proferunt quid homines facere soleant non quid debeant. Bacon de Augment. Scient. lib. vii, cap. 2, fol. 397. SECTION I. THE fame of great men is itself exposed to the caprices of fortune. Tarquin, the last king of Rome, is rather hated and abused because he was overpowered by a more powerful party, than for any known demerit; it is grossly unjust to quote his as a by-name for a tyrant. The Gracchi are stigmatized, because unsuccessful; Cataline is in the same predicament. It is a disputable point, whether in Rome, the republican form of government was not destroyed in consequence of the assassination of Cæsar; and yet Cæsar has been called a tyrant, and his murderers celebrated as patriots; though it is probable that Cæsar was a friend to democracy, and Brutus, with the associates of his crime, were certainly nobles, of whose power and privileges he was suspected to aim the destruction. Augustus, again, the destroyer of his country's freedom, the proscriber of so many truly virtuous men, the exiler of so many others, has obtained from patronized authors a splen did reputation. Trajan, far his superior in virtue, falls short of him in celebrity. The dirty vices so freely ascribed to the first family of Roman emperors, are in a great part the spiteful inventions of those whom the supplanting families chose as historiographers. But to draw examples from modern times,-in what respect was Mary, queen of England, worse than Elizabeth? It is true, that actuated by a furious bigotry, and a savage spirit of persecution, she brought hundreds to the stake, because they would not measure their faith by the courtly standard-but did Persecution slumber on her wheel in the popular reign of Elizabeth? If the fires of Smithfield ceased to burn, the gallows, in all parts of the country, groaned with the weight of martyrs, whose quivering hearts and reeking entrails, torn from their gashed but stillbreathing bodies, were exposed to the gaze of a savage and unfeeling multitude. In addition to the horrors of persecution in which Elizabeth shares an equal guilt with her sister, she, besides, imprisoned and basely murdered her lovely and detergeress cousin, who had flown to her for protection. But success varnished the cruelties of Elizabeth, veiled her murders, and shed lustre on her crimes. She, therefore, is called great and illustrious, and her sister Mary stigmatized as a sanguinary monster. Not satisfied with having sacrificed the happiness and life of her cousin at the shrine of her vy and ambition, she endeavoured, by means of hired writers, to blacken her fame, and transmit her to posterity, stigmatized with foul crimes, and it is not till after the lapse of centuries, that the character of this much-injured woman is recovering its spotless purity. Why is the character of James the Second blackened, whose principal endeavour was to establish the universal toleration of religious opinions, but because a successful usurper precipitated him from the throne? The fact is, that a powerful and victorious party always contrives to whelm beneath the weight of slander and obloquy, the character of its meritorious opponents: one age bequeaths to the next the error, and it is only when one of those rare periods arrives, in which every opinion s examined by a laudable scepticism, every prejudice probed, and every error eradicated, that the pure silver is freed from the tarnish of falsehood. This has been the lot of Machiavel; the multitude has ever mistaken him for the preacher of injustice and the legislator of tyranny. While the uninformed philanthropist has shuddered at his name; while with it republicans have associated all that is dreadful in despotism, and all that is detestable in the crooked policy of courts;* even despots have affected to shrink with horror at maxims which they have, notwithstanding been in the constant habit of practising.t It is because he has too openly and with too little dissimulation, exposed to the public view the secret springs of their conduct, that tyrants really detest his character; and this charge I shall not attempt to deny or palliate. But from the opposite charge of advocating despotism, I will defend him. This stigma, indeed, can be affixed to his character, only by the most superficial reader of his works. The veil of irony, in which he has enveloped himself, is so transparent, that a very small degree of penetration would be sufficient to see him in his true and proper colours, if his works were but read. Unfortunately, they are not; and mankind, ever ready to take for granted what is confidently asserted, have implicitly assented to the black character, which want of apprehension or prejudice has bestowed upon him. In opposition to the herd of his calumniators, Machiavel has had some few splendid panegyrists. The profound Bacon was sensible of his merit, and we are directed by an ingenious modern writer," if we wish to become acquainted with the evils of despotism to read Machiavel." It is not on account of the originality of his conception, the strength of his reasoning, the vigour of his intellect, or the profound knowledge he has displayed of the human mind, great as is his excellence in these points, that I would wish to recal the attention of the public to the long-neglected works of this great man; it is on account of his inveterate hatred to tyrants, and the admirable maxims of liberty with which his writings abound, that I make the present feeble effort to rescue him from obscurity. Among the works which have this for their object, “ The Prince" of Machiavel holds a distinguished rank. The author * In the national convention of France it was the fashion to style the conspiracy of kings against their liberty, "Le Machiavelisme des Cours." † I particularly allude to the Anti-Machiavel of the late king of Prussia ‡ Calm Observer. does not merely treat of the casual evils incidental to this form of government, but of those which are necessarily connected with it, and are interwoven in its very texture. In a strain of subtile irony he affects to instruct princes: he tells them, that from a severe attention to ancient and modern history, he is enabled to lay down certain rules, which, unless they comply with, they must not expect a glorious nor even a safe reign. These rules and maxims are the most detestable that can be conceived: in a word, they form a counterpart of the conduct of the tyrants who have hitherto existed for the unhappiness of mankind. The dreadful precepts he inculcates were but too well known to the tyrants of antiquity, and are but too much practised by the despots of modern times. In this work princes see that there is but one method of perpetuating their power, and that is, by keeping the people depressed, wretched, and incapable of resistance. But if Machiavel has feigned to give lessons to kings, he has given a very important one to the people. "The Prince of Machiavel is the book for republicans," says the author of the Social Contract. A view of the life, and an examination of the conduct of Machiavel, will tend to confirm the opinion I have advanced of his being not the champion but the mortal enemy of tyranny. Nicholas Machiavel, one of the most celebrated writers on political science the world ever produced, was born at Florence on the third day of May, 1469. That it is of little consequence who were the ancestors and what the fortune of an illustrious man, is a very trite observation; but it surely is in some degree interesting to ascertain what were the circumstances of those, whose fate it has been to rear men of genius, in order that it may be known whether the works which immortalise them were the product of unassisted nature, or of nature aided by the previous labour of other men. In the present case we are entirely in the dark. Our judgment is rather perverted than aided by a perusal of the cotemporary writers, or those whose works appeared a few years after the death of Machiavel. Some of them say he was the descendant of an illustrious family, while others of equal credit affirm that he belonged to the refuse of the people. I am inclined to discredit the first opinion; for not to mention that a long race of luxurious and enervated patricians can hardly be supposed to |