Rousseau_contrat-social

22. It is of great importance that the form of the election of
magistrates should be regulated by law; for if it is left at the
discretion of the prince, it is impossible to avoid falling into
hereditary aristocracy, as the Republics of Venice and Berne actually
did. The first of these has therefore long been a State dissolved; the
second, however, is maintained by the extreme wisdom of the senate, and
forms an honourable and highly dangerous exception.
23. Machiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen; but, being attached
to the court of the Medici, he could not help veiling his love of
liberty in the midst of his country’s oppression. The choice of his
detestable hero, Caesar Borgia, clearly enough shows his hidden aim; and
the contradiction between the teaching of the Prince and that of the
Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound
political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt
readers. The Court of Rome sternly prohibited his book. I can well
believe it; for it is that Court it most clearly portrays.
24. Tacitus, Histories, i. 16. "For the best, and also the shortest way
of finding out what is good and what is bad is to consider what you
would have wished to happen or not to happen, had another than you been
Emperor."
25. In the Statesman.
26. This does not contradict what I said before (Book II, ch. 9) about
the disadvantages of great States; for we were then dealing with the
authority of the government over the members, while here we are dealing
with its force against the subjects. Its scattered members serve it as
rallying-points for action against the people at a distance, but it has
no rallying-point for direct action on its members themselves. Thus the
length of the lever is its weakness in the one case, and its strength in
the other.
27. On the same principle it should be judged what centuries deserve the
preference for human prosperity. Those in which letters and arts have
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