Note 400 — BOOK VII THE MONGOL EMPIRES OF THE LAND WAYS AND THE NEW EMPIRES OF THE SEA WAYS (continued 2)

E. B. writes as follows: “I think better of Machiavelli than you do, and especially on two points. (1) He raises a real issue—whether, when a crisis besets the State, the ruler is not bound to abandon the rules of private morality, if by doing so he can preserve the State. If he abandons those rules, he does wrong—and Machiavelli admits that—but, at the same time, as the agent and organ of the State, he does right by preserving it, so far, at any rate, as it is right that it should be preserved. This is a real issue, which one cannot simply dismiss. E.g., all war is wrong, by the rules of private morality, because it is killing; but it may have a qualified and conditioned rightness if it is necessary to preserve the State, and if the State, as a scheme of good life, ought to be preserved. (2) Machiavelli did believe in the people. He only exalts the new prince, who arises to restore order and security in a troubled State. In normal times he believes that the people is a good judge of men: that ‘better than many fortresses is not to be hated by the people’; that the trite proverb, ‘He who founds himself on the people founds himself on mud,’ is untrue, except as applied to demagogues.”