'Firenze a quel grado e pervenuta che facilmente da uno savio dator di leggi potrebbe essere in qualunque forma di governo riordinata.' This is the dominant thought which pervades his treatise on the right ordering of the State of Florence addressed to Leo X.[1] A more consummate piece of political mechanism than that devised by Machiavelli in this essay can hardly be imagined.

It is like a clock with separate actions for hours, minutes, seconds, and the revolutions of the moon and planets.

All the complicated interest of parties and classes in the state, the traditional pre-eminence of the Medicean family, the rights of the Church, and the relation of Florence to foreign powers, have been carefully considered and provided for.

The defect of this consummate work of art is that it remained a mere machine, devised to meet the exigencies of the moment, and powerless against such perturbations as the characters and passions of living men must introduce into the working of a Commonwealth.

Had Florence been a colony established in a new country with no neighbors but savages, or had it been an institution protected from without against the cupidity of selfish rivals, then such a constitution might have been imposed on it with profit.