No More Learning

--I have marked among the nobility some are so addicted
to the service of the prince and commonwealth, as they look not for
spoil; such are to be honoured and loved. There are others which no
obligation will fasten on; and they are of two sorts. The first are such
as love their own ease; or, out of vice, of nature, or self-direction,
avoid business and care. Yet these the prince may use with safety. The
other remove themselves upon craft and design, as the architects say,
with a premeditated thought, to their own rather than their prince's
profit. Such let the prince take heed of, and not doubt to reckon in the
list of his open enemies.

_Principum. varia_. --_Firmissima vero omnium basis jus haereditarium
Principis_. --There is a great variation between him that is raised to the
sovereignty by the favour of his peers and him that comes to it by the
suffrage of the people. The first holds with more difficulty, because he
hath to do with many that think themselves his equals, and raised him for
their own greatness and oppression of the rest. The latter hath no
upbraiders, but was raised by them that sought to be defended from
oppression: whose end is both easier and the honester to satisfy.
Beside, while he hath the people to friend, who are a multitude, he hath
the less fear of the nobility, who are but few. Nor let the common
proverb (of he that builds on the people builds on the dirt) discredit my
opinion: for that hath only place where an ambitious and private person,
for some popular end, trusts in them against the public justice and
magistrate. There they will leave him.
But when a prince governs them,
so as they have still need of his administrations (for that is his art),
he shall ever make and hold them faithful.

_Clementia_. --_Machiavell_. --A prince should exercise his cruelty not by
himself but by his ministers; so he may save himself and his dignity with
his people by sacrificing those when he list, saith the great doctor of
state, Machiavell. But I say he puts off man and goes into a beast, that
is cruel. No virtue is a prince's own, or becomes him more, than this
clemency: and no glory is greater than to be able to save with his power.
Many punishments sometimes, and in some cases, as much discredit a
prince, as many funerals a physician. The state of things is secured by
clemency; severity represseth a few, but irritates more. {74a} The
lopping of trees makes the boughs shoot out thicker; and the taking away
of some kind of enemies increaseth the number. It is then most gracious
in a prince to pardon when many about him would make him cruel; to think
then how much he can save when others tell him how much he can destroy;
not to consider what the impotence of others hath demolished, but what
his own greatness can sustain. These are a prince's virtues: and they
that give him other counsels are but the hangman's factors.

_Clementia tutela optima_. --He that is cruel to halves (saith the said St.
Nicholas {74b}) loseth no less the opportunity of his cruelty than of his
benefits: for then to use his cruelty is too late; and to use his favours
will be interpreted fear and necessity, and so he loseth the thanks.
Still the counsel is cruelty. But princes, by hearkening to cruel
counsels, become in time obnoxious to the authors, their flatterers, and
ministers; and are brought to that, that when they would, they dare not
change them; they must go on and defend cruelty with cruelty; they cannot
alter the habit.