# Chapter XXII — Of Those Whom Princes Have as Secretaries

The choice of ministers is of no small importance to a prince; they are good or not according to the prudence of the prince. And the first conjecture that is to be made of the brain of a lord is to see the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful, he can always be reputed wise because he has known how to recognize them as capable and to maintain them as faithful. But if they are otherwise, one can always pass unfavorable judgment on him, because the first error he makes, he makes in this choice.

There was no one who knew Messer Antonio da Venafro 188 as minister of Pandolfo Petrucci, prince of Siena,189 who did not judge Pandolfo to be a most worthy man, since he had Antonio as his minister. And since there are three kinds of brains: one that understands by itself, another that discerns what others understand, the third that understands neither by itself nor through others; the first is most excellent, the second excellent, and the third useless—it follows, therefore, of necessity that, if Pandolfo was not in the first rank, he was in the second. For every time that one has the judgment to recognize the good or evil that someone does or says, although he does not have the inventiveness by himself, he knows the bad deeds and the good of his minister and extols190 the one and corrects the other; and the minister cannot hope to deceive him and remains good himself.

But as to how a prince can know his minister, here is a mode that never fails. When you see a minister thinking more of himself than of you, and in all actions looking for something useful to himself, one so made will never be a good minister; never will you be able to trust him, because he who has someone’s state in his hands should never think of himself but always of the prince, and he should never remember anything that does not pertain to the prince. And on the other side, the prince should think of the minister so as to keep him good—honoring him, making him rich, obligating him to himself, sharing honors and burdens with him so that he sees he cannot stand without the prince and so that many honors do not make him desire more honors, much wealth does not make him desire more wealth, and many burdens make him fear changes. When, therefore, ministers and princes in relation to ministers are so constituted, they can trust one another; when it is otherwise, the end is always damaging either for one or the other.