XV.: "Public affairs are easily managed in a city where the body of the people is not corrupt; and where equality exists, there no principality can be established; nor can a republic be established where there is no equality." No man has been more harshly judged than Machiavelli, especially in the two centuries following his death.

But he has since found many able champions and the tide has turned.

_The Prince_ has been termed a manual for tyrants, the effect of which has been most pernicious.

But were Machiavelli's doctrines really new?
Did he discover them?
He merely had the candor and courage to write down what everybody was thinking and what everybody knew.

He merely gives us the impressions he had received from a long and intimate intercourse with princes and the affairs of state.