MACHIAVELLI’S LIFE

Taranaki Daily News, 5 July 1929, Page 12

MACHIAVELLI’S LIFE

HIS POLITICAL STRATEGY •SUAVE EMISSARY Of FLORENCE. GREAT ITALIAN STATESMAN. I It is 400 years since Niccolo Machiavelli was born; it is 402 years since he died. Within his 58 years Niccolo impressed his personality upon subsequent generations with an indelibility that is exceptional in human history. “Machiavellian’’ is now a tolerably familiar term. It is employed to describe political strategy that is inexcusably, reprehensibly “shady." The derivation of the adjective is obvious. Many genteel people employ the name “Old Nick" as a euphemism for the devil. There is a current belief that Nick is a contraction of Niccolo. The belief is erroneous, but it reveals that men are convinced the two characters had much in common, says a writer iu the Melbourne Age. To understand what Machiavelli did it is needful to realise where, historically, he stood. After the Roman Empire collapsed, several Italian cities slowly acquired eminence. Of these Florence was the most famous. By means of the industry and artistic genius of its citizens Florence became wealthy and powerful. Many of the men who bear the most illustrious names in Italian history had Florence for birthplace. Dante, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci were of Florentine origin. So was Machiavelli. His origin was humble; details of his early years are few and fragmentary. But that he was born within the walls of Florence, and played as an urchin in its streets, H quite certain. He was educated after a manner, but he was in no sense a scholar. That was no disadvantage. Mediaeval scholarship was a fantastic thing, a futile thing; it had no relation to things practical or to things cultural. Machiavelli owes his fame far more to the qualities that were bestowed upon him by nature and that were sharpened for use by free contact with the commerce of the city streets. His literary style embodies the vigorous, viviu. language he was wont to speak. At no time is his thought buried under that laboured verbosity whi-’i was affected by the misguided champions of mediaeval scholasticism. BEGAN LIFE AS CLERK. He began his economic life as a clerk, but soon lie became secretary to the Council of War. He was ill-paid; he barely earned his bread and cheese. But he had reached the atmosphere in which his natural talents could 'blossom; lie had found the work for which he had 'been born. The leaders of the Florentine Republic sent him on many important missions; they entrusted him with many delicate negotiations. His abilities as a diplomat were so conspicuous that he was constantly engaged on some ‘‘nasty job.” In all circumstances Machiavelli was suave but shrewd; he was plausible, but subtle. In the course of his fourteen years’ occupancy of the post he met kings and potentates in adjacent nations and States. He was deferential to each of them, although in genius and foresight lie was master of the whole of them. All the while he was adding invaluable experience to his natural gifts, and was equipping himself for his far more important future work. National life was a troubled sea in Machiavelli’s day. In Florence several wealthy families struggled for political power, but had been expelled; as a result of one of the recurrent upheavals they once more came back. And as they quite rightly believed that Machiavelli, the Republican, was not at all pleased, to see them, they expelled him. Subsequently, because they suspected him of conspiracy against the family, they imprisoned him and tortured* him in order to induce him to betray the names of others. He may have 'had nothing to confess, but if he had his tortures could not extract it.

Later there was another change of ruler. Machiavelli was granted an amnesty, and he withdrew to the country. lie was forty-five years of age, arid in those days that age was elderly. But at his country farm he did a work which has far outlasted all else he ever did. He began to write. This was a new channel for the expression of his genius. He continued to be poor; despite his lofty employments he had never been anything else. He still received small appointments from successsire governments, but the rewards for these did not deliver him from the financial embarrassments. MANY NOTABLE WRITINGS. In his poverty and obscurity, however, Ire produced those literary works which have ensured him fame centuries after those who neglected him have been completely forgotten. He wrote novels, comedies, histories, military and political treatises, most of which have won great praise, but some of which have been the objects of unrestrained censure.

Machiavelli 'had been engaged in certain diplomatic manoeuvres on behalf of the Government, and upon their completion he returned to Florence. There, in 1527, he died suddenly, and still in poverty. He lies buried in the Church of Santa Croce. More than 250 years passed before any monument was erected to his memory. Even then it was erected by an Englishman, Earl Cowper. It is hardly possible to assess with accuracy the work and. philosophy of this great Italian statesman. His character has been so consistently blackened that under the coatings of calumny and misrepresentation it is difficult to get at the real person. He has had generations of traducers. Once that habit is started it is practically impossible to stop it. It is so intellectually easy and morally soothing to sit in judgment to-day upon the principles Machiavelli enunciated long ago. But it is essential to keep in view the conditions to which the principles were to be applied, and of which they were designed to be ameliorative. Feudalism was breaking up. In his person Machiavelli marks the end of the mediaeval era; he was the

herald of modern political systems. Statecraft, as now understood, had not started. Machiavelli was really its founder. The treatise entitled “The Prince” is the one by which Machiavelli has given the greatest moral offence. In it he expound,? his idea of the strong State and the efficient ruler. Italy’s mediaeval cities were prosperous, ’but their citizens had no conception of patriotism. Met; cenarics composed the armies, Each city was a hotbed of intrigue and treachery; family groups fought for their own hand and for the all-round mastery. Both people and rulers were startled and enraged by Machiavelli’s doctrine that the welfare of the State should be placed above everything else on earth. Yet, briefly put, that was the sum of Machiavelli's fault.

Within limits, there is nothing reprehensible in the doctrine. In most modern countries it is to-day acted upon as if it were a superlative virtue. Machiavelli’s crime was the not unfamiliar one of being born several hundreds of years before his time. Doubtless ho pressed his doctrine to the danger point. There was practically no act he would not do, no lie he would not tell, no treachery he would not applaud in order to exalt the State and to entrench more securely its prince. It has, however, to be borne in mind that Machiavelli's ambition was to deliver his country from the foul conspiracies and civil strife which beset it. That he urged his policy cynically and with the utmost contempt for personal and national morality is to be deplored. But it is accounted for quite adequately by the political and social environment amid which he was reared.

Certain it is that, in the centuries since he lived, lie has nad a vast host of imitators, who have made audacious and ignoble attempts at what they believe to have been Machiavelli’s craft. Not all of them, however, have, as earnestly sought to emulate Machiavelli’s very sincere and disinterested devotion to the State.