# 16. A People accustomed to live under a Prince, should they by some Eventuality become free, will with Difficulty maintain their Freedom

How difficult it is for a people accustomed to live under a prince to preserve their liberty, should they by some accident acquire it as Rome did after the expulsion of the Tarquins, is shown by numerous examples which may be studied in the historical records of ancient times. That there should be such a difficulty is reasonable; for such a people differs in no wise from a wild animal which, though by nature fierce and accustomed to the woods, has been brought up in captivity and servitude and is then loosed to rove the countryside at will, where, being unaccustomed to seeking its own food and discovering no place in which it can find refuge, it becomes the prey of the first comer who seeks to chain it up again.

The same thing happens to a people which has been accustomed to live under foreign rulers and so has taken no thought for either public defence or offence and is acquainted with no princes nor yet are any acquainted with it; it forthwith returns to the yoke, and ofttimes to a heavier one than that which, a while back, it threw off its neck. This difficulty may occur, no matter how free the material be from corruption. But, since a people which has become wholly corrupt, cannot even for a brief space, no, not even for a moment, enjoy its freedom, as we shall show later, we shall confine ourselves in the present discourse to peoples in whom corruption has not advanced too far, and in whom there is still more goodness than rottenness.12

In addition to the difficulty already mentioned there is yet another. It is that the government of a state which has become free evokes factions which are hostile, not factions which are friendly. To such hostile factions will belong all those who held preferment under the tyrannical government and grew fat on the riches of its prince, since, now that they are deprived of these emoluments, they cannot live contented, but are compelled, each of them, to try to restore the tyranny in order to regain their authority. Nor, as I have said, will such a government acquire supporters who are friendly, because a self-governing statea assigns honours and rewards only for honest and determinate reasons, and, apart from this, rewards and honours no one; and when one acquires honours or advantages which appear to have been deserved, one does not acknowledge any obligation towards those responsible for the remuneration. Furthermore, that common advantage which results from a self-governing state is not recognized by anybody so long as it is possessed – the possibility of enjoying what one has, freely and without incurring suspicion for instance, the assurance that one’s wife and children will be respected, the absence of fear for oneself – for no one admits that he incurs an obligation to another merely because that other has done him no wrong.

It is, then, as I have said. The government of a state which is free and has been newly formed, will evoke hostile factions but not friendly factions. If then one desires to remedy these difficulties and to cure the disorders which the aforesaid difficulties bring about, there is no way more efficient, more sure, more safe or more necessary, than to kill the sons of Brutus, who, as history shows13 would not together with other Roman youths have been induced to conspire against their country if it had not been that, under consuls, they could not attain to an outstanding position, as they could under the kings; so that the freedom of the people was, from their point of view, but servitude.

He then who sets out to govern the masses, whether in a free state or in a principality, and does not secure himself against those who are hostile to the new order, is setting up a form of government which will be but short-lived. True, I look upon those rulers as unhappy who, to make their government secure, have to adopt abnormal methods because they find the masses hostile; for he who has but the few as his enemies, can easily and without much scandal make himself secure, but he who has the public as a whole for his enemy can never make himself secure; and the greater his cruelty, the weaker does his regime become. In such a case the best remedy he can adopt is to make the populace his friend.

Though to speak now of a prince, now of a republic is to distort the plan of this discourse, I propose, none the less, to talk of princes that I may not have to return to this topic. If, then, a prince wants to make sure of a populace that might be hostile to him – I speak of such princes as have become tyrants in their own country – what I say is that he ought first to ask what it is that the people desire, and that he will always find that they desire two things: (i) to avenge themselves against the persons who have been the cause of their servitude, and (ii) to regain their freedom. The first of these demands the prince can satisfy entirely, the second in part.

Of the first demand there is an example much to the point. When Clearchus, tyrant of Heraclea, was in exile, it happened that in Heraclea a controversy arose between its populace and the upper class who were in the weaker position, and so decided to support Clearchus and, despite the popular feeling, swore to bring him back and to deprive the populace of its freedom. It thus came about that Clearchus found himself between an arrogant upper class which he could in no way either satisfy or correct, and a raving populace who could not stand having lost its freedom. He decided therefore at one stroke to free himself from the vexations caused by the leading men and to win over the populace. So, choosing a suitable opportunity, he cut to pieces all the nobles to the immense satisfaction of the popular party, and in this way satisfied one of the demands of the populace, namely, the demand for vengeance.

As to the second popular demand – the restoration of freedom, since this the prince is unable to satisfy, he should inquire as to the grounds on which the demand for freedom is based. He will find that a small section of the populace desire to be free in order to obtain authority over others, but that the vast bulk of those who demand freedom, desire but to live in security. For in all states whatever be their form of government, the real rulers do not amount to more than forty or fifty citizens and, since this is a small number, it is an easy thing to make yourself secure in their regard either by doing away with them or by granting them such a share of honours, according to their standing, as will for the most part satisfy them. As for the rest, who demand but to live in security, they can easily be satisfied by introducing such institutions and laws as shall, in conjunction with the power of the prince, make for the security of the public as a whole. When a prince does this, and the people see that on no occasion does he break such laws, in a short time they will begin to live in security and contentment.

This is exemplified by the kingdom of France, in which people live in security simply because its kings are pledged to observe numerous laws on which the security of all their people depends. It was the intention of the founder of this state that its kings should do as they thought fit in regard to the use of arms and to finance, but that in other respects they should act as the laws required.14 That prince, therefore, or that republic which has not made its government secure at the outset, must take the first opportunity of doing so, as the Romans did. He who fails to do this will repent too late of having omitted to do what he ought to have done.

Thus, since the Roman people were not as yet corrupt when they regained their freedom, they were able to maintain it when the sons of Brutus were dead and there was an end of the Tarquins, by means of those methods of government and those institutions which are discussed elsewhere. On the other hand, had this people already become corrupt, neither in Rome nor anywhere else would remedies adequate for its maintenance have been found, as will be shown in the next chapter.