The commencement of "the Prince," like that of most works of genius and science, is extremely simple and unadorned. He divides all states into the two classes of republics and principalities; in which he seems to have had Tacitus in his eye, who considered them as two opposites[1]. He next distinguishes the various kinds of principalities, how they have been acquired, and how they are governed; which he evidently intends to serve as data whereon to build the general structure of his arguments.
One would have imagined, that so short a chapter containing nothing but simple self-evident truths, would have escaped the animadversion and censure of the royal commentator; but such was not its fate. Frederic, with a degree of vanity only to be excused from his youth, inconsiderately determined, to refute—no, that was impossible—but to cavil at every chapter of the whole work; and he here finds fault with
- ↑ Res dissociabiles, principatum et libertatem,
