many clients, many correspondents, many debtors;
he can bind people by pecuniary obligations: he becomes prince. Sforza
has a victorious army, whom he can either hound on to the city or
restrain into a protection of its interests: he becomes prince.
Savonarola has eloquence that makes the virtuous start up and the wicked
tremble: he becomes prince. The history of the Italian commonwealths
shows us but one thing: the people, the only legal possessors of
political power, giving it over to their bankers (Medici, Pepoli); to
their generals (Della Torre, Visconti, Scaligeri); to their monkish
reformers (Fra Bussolaro, Fra Giovanni da Vincenza, Savonarola). Here
then we have the occasional but inevitable usurpers, who either
momentarily or finally disorganize the State. But this is not all. In
such a State every family hate, every mercantile hostility, means a
corresponding political division. The guilds are sure to be rivals, the
larger wishing to exclude the smaller from government: the lower working
classes (the _ciompi_ of Florence) wish to upset the guilds completely;
the once feudal nobles wish to get back military power; the burghers
wish entirely to extirpate the feudal nobles; the older families wish to
limit the Government, the newer prefer democracy and Caesarism. Add to
this the complications of private interests, the personal jealousies and
aversions, the private warfare, inevitable in a town where legal justice
is not always to be had, while forcible retaliation is always within
reach; and the result is constant party spirit, insults, scuffles,
conspiracies: the feudal nobles build towers in the streets, the
burghers pull them down; the lower artizans set fire to the warehouses
of the guilds, the magistrates take part in the contest; blood is spilt,
magistrates are beheaded or thrown out of windows, a foreign State is
entreated to interfere, and a number of citizens are banished by the
victorious party. This latter result creates a new and terrible danger
for the State, in the persons of so many exiles, ready to do anything,
to join with any one, in order to return to the city and drive out their
enemies in their turn. The end of such constant upheavings is that the
whole population is disarmed, no party suffering its rival to have any
means of offence or defence. Moreover, as industry and commerce
develope, the citizens become unwilling to fight, while on the other
hand the invention of firearms, subverting the