Nor can I find words to describe the love with which he would be hailed in all the provinces that have suffered through these foreign deluges, the thirst for vengeance, the stubborn fidelity, the piety, the tears, that he would meet What gates would be closed against him?
What people would refuse him allegiance?
What jealousy would thwart him?
What Italian would be found to refuse him homage?
This rule of the barbarians stinks in the nostrils of us all.

Then let your illustrious House assume this enterprise in the spirit and the confidence wherewith just enterprises are begun, that so, under your flag, this land of ours may be ennobled, and under your auspices be brought to pass that prophecy of Petrarch:-- 'Lo, valor against rage Shall take up arms, nor shall the fight be long; For that old heritage Of courage in Italian hearts is stout and strong.
With this trumpet-cry of impassioned patriotism the _Principe_ closes.
Hegel, in his 'Philosophy of History,' has recorded a judgment of Machiavelli's treatise in relation to the political conditions of Italy at the end of the mediaeval period, which might be quoted as the most complete apology for the author it is possible to make.

'This book,' he says, 'has often been cast aside with horror as containing maxims of the most revolting tyranny; yet it was Machiavelli's high sense of the necessity of constituting a state which caused him to lay down the principles on which alone states could be formed under the circumstances.

The isolated lords and lordships had to be entirely suppressed; and though our idea of Freedom is incompatible with the means which he proposes both as the only available and also as wholly justifiable--including, as these do, the most reckless violence, all kinds of deception, murder, and the like--yet we must confess that the despots who had to be subdued were assailable in no other way, inasmuch as indomitable lawlessness and perfect depravity were thoroughly engrained in them.' Yet after the book has been shut and the apology has been weighed, we cannot but pause and ask ourselves this question, Which was the truer patriot--Machiavelli, systematizing the political vices and corruptions of his time in a philosophical essay, and calling on the despot to whom it was dedicated to liberate Italy; or Savonarola, denouncing sin and enforcing repentance--Machiavelli, who taught as precepts of pure wisdom those very principles of public immorality which lay at the root of Italy's disunion and weakness; or Savonarola, who insisted that without a moral reformation no liberty was possible?
We shall have to consider the action of Savonarola in another place.

Meanwhile, it is not too much to affirm that, with diplomatists like Machiavelli, and with princes like those whom he has idealized, Italy could not be free.