# 32. Neither a Republic nor a Prince should put off conferring Benefits on People until danger is at hand

Admittedly the Romans were fortunate in that they managed to be generous to the populace when danger arose. Thus, when Porsenna came to attack Rome to restore the Tarquins and the senate doubted whether the plebs would not prefer to welcome back the kings rather than go to war, for security’s sake it remitted the duty on salt and other burdens, alleging that the poor did enough to help the public cause by bringing up their children; and admittedly by conferring this benefit it induced them to stand siege, hunger and war. Let no one, however, relying on this case, put off making sure of the populace until the time of danger arrives, because he may not, as the Romans did, succeed in this. For the people as a whole will not consider that they owe this benefit to you, but rather to your enemies, and, since they cannot but fear that, when the need has passed, you may deprive them of what you have been compelled to give, will in no way feel obliged to you.

The reason why the Romans turned this question to good account, was because the government was new and not yet stabilized. The populace had seen how laws had already been made to their advantage, for instance the right of appealing to the plebs, so that it was possible to persuade it that this benefit had been conferred not so much because the enemy were at their gates as because the senate was inclined to confer benefits on it. Besides this, it still retained a vivid recollection of the kings by whom it had been downtrodden and maltreated. But, since such causes are rarely operative, it will rarely happen that such remedies are of avail.

Hence every government, whether it be republican or of the princely type, should consider beforehand what adverse times may befall him and on what people it may have to rely in time of adversity, and should in its dealings with them act in that way in which it judges that it will be compelled to act should misfortune befall. A government which acts otherwise – whether it be a prince or a republic, but especially if it be a prince, – i.e. a government which thinks that it is only when danger has arisen that it should win men over by the conferring of benefits, is mistaken; for not only will it fail to win them over, but it will hasten its own ruin.





Book One



[DISCOURSES 33–6]


[The Use and Abuse of Dictatorship]