Ang prinsipe

All states that have held rule over men are either republics or principalities. Of republics, much has been said elsewhere. Here, the concern is the principality: how it may be acquired, how it may be kept, and why it is so often lost. For a prince who inherits his state, the task is simple. He need only not transgress the customs of his ancestors, and he will be more loved than any usurper, for the antiquity of his rule has erased the motives for change. It is the new prince, however, who faces the true test, for he is beset by endless difficulties.

When a state is acquired, especially one that differs in language, laws, and customs from your own, good fortune and great energy are needed to hold it. The most effective course is to reside there in person, for when you are on the spot, disorders are seen as they spring up and can be swiftly remedied. If you are not at hand, they are heard of only when they are great, and then it is too late. The next best course is to plant colonies in one or two key places, which bind the state to you. This injures only the few from whom land is taken, and they, being poor and scattered, can never harm you. For it must be understood that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, but of more serious ones they cannot.

A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for that is the sole art that belongs to him who rules. The chief foundations of all states are good laws and good arms, and there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed. The arms with which a prince defends his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, or auxiliaries. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous. They are disunited, ambitious, without discipline, unfaithful; valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies. The ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries. A wise prince has always avoided these arms and turned to his own, willing rather to lose with them than to conquer with others, not deeming that a real victory which is gained with the arms of others.

It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity. Many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, but how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation. Therefore, while it would be praiseworthy to possess all the qualities reputed to be good - liberality, clemency, faithfulness - human conditions do not permit it. A reputation for liberality, for instance, requires a magnificence that will consume all your property and in the end force you to burden your people with taxes, making you odious. Thus, a wise prince should not fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will be considered more liberal when it is seen that his economy is sufficient to defend himself and undertake enterprises without taxing his subjects.

Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? One should wish to be both, but because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved. For this can be said of men in general: they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, and covetous. As long as you succeed, they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, their property, their life, and their children when the need is distant, but when it approaches, they turn against you. Love is preserved by a link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. Still, a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; for he can endure being feared so long as he is not hated, which will always be the case if he abstains from the property of his citizens and from their women.

Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith. Nevertheless, our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft. A prince must understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man. He ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves. A wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him. If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them. It is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler. A prince must appear to have all the good qualities, especially religion, but have a mind ready to turn itself according to the winds and variations of fortune.

Above all things, a prince must avoid being despised and hated. It makes him hated to be rapacious and a violator of the property and women of his subjects. It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, or irresolute. Against this, a prince ought to guard himself as from a rock, and endeavor to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude. He who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against. Indeed, one of the most efficacious remedies that a prince can have against conspiracies is not to be hated by the people, for the best possible fortress is the love of the people.

It is not unknown how many have held the opinion that the affairs of the world are so governed by fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, it may be true that fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half. I compare her to one of those raging rivers which, when in flood, sweeps away trees and buildings. Yet when the weather becomes fair, men can make provision with defenses and barriers, so that the waters may pass away by canal and their force be neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous. So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valor has not prepared to resist her. And I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under, it is necessary to beat and ill-use her. She is, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.

Considering all these things, the present times seem propitious for a new prince to introduce a new order. Italy, more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians, more scattered than the Athenians, lies beaten, despoiled, and torn. Left as without life, she waits for him who shall heal her wounds and put an end to the ravaging of Lombardy and the swindling of Tuscany. She is ready and willing to follow a banner, if only someone will raise it. Nor is there to be seen at present one in whom she can place more hope than in an illustrious house, favored by God and by the Church, to be the head of this redemption. To all, this barbarous dominion stinks. Let your house, therefore, take up this charge with that courage and hope with which all just enterprises are undertaken, so that under its standard our native country may be ennobled, and under its auspices may be verified that saying of Petrarch: “Virtue against fury shall advance the fight, / And it i' th' combat soon shall put to flight.”