in religion as well as in society,
the official censures of the Church and the protests of every divine
since Catharinus were ineffectual. Much of the profaner criticism
uttered by such authorities as the Cardinal de Retz, Voltaire, Frederic
the Great, Daunou, and Mazzini is not more convincing or more real.
Linguet was not altogether wrong in suggesting that the assailants knew
Machiavelli at second hand: "Chaque fois que je jette les yeux sur les
ouvrages de ce grand genie, je ne saurais concevoir, je l'avoue, la
cause du decri ou il est tombe. Je soupconne fortement que ses plus
grands ennemis sont ceux qui ne l'ont pas lu." Retz attributed to him a
proposition which is not in his writings. Frederic and Algernon Sidney
had read only one of his books, and Bolingbroke, a congenial spirit, who
quotes him so often, knew him very little. Hume spoils a serious remark
by a glaring eighteenth-century comment: "There is scarcely any maxim in
_The Prince_ which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted. The
errors of this politician proceeded, in a great measure, from his having
lived in too early an age of the world to be a good judge of political
truth." Bodin had previously written: "Il n'a jamais sonde le gue de la
science politique." Mazzini complains of his _analisi cadaverica ed
ignoranza della vita_; and Barthelemy St Hilaire, verging on paradox,
says: "On dirait vraiment que l'histoire ne lui a rien appris, non plus
que la conscience." That would be more scientific treatment than the
common censure of moralists and the common applause of politicians. It
is easier to expose errors in practical politics than to remove the
ethical basis of judgments which the modern world employs in common with
Machiavelli.

By plausible and dangerous paths men are drawn to the doctrine of the
justice of History, of judgment by results, the nursling of the
nineteenth century, from which a sharp incline leads to _The Prince_.
When we say that public life is not an affair of morality, that there is
no available rule of right and wrong, that men must be judged by their
age, that the code shifts with the longitude, that the wisdom which
governs the event is superior to our own, we carry obscurely tribute to
the system which bears so odious a name. Few would scruple to maintain
with Mr. Morley that the equity of history requires that we shall judge
men of action by the standards of men of action; or with Retz: "Les
vices d'un archeveque