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