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MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLO. Nicholas Machiavel's Prince. Also, the Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca. And the meanes Duke Valentine us'd to put to death Vitellezzo Vitelli, Oliverotto of Fermo, Paul, and the Duke of Gravina. Translated out of Italian into English; by E[dward] D[acres]. London: R. Bishop for W. Hills, sold by D. Pakeman 1640. 12mo, 139 x 84mm. (5 1/2 x 3 1/4in.), contemporary blind-ruled sheep, rebacked, corners and lower cover abraded, small loss to lower outer corner of G6 catching rule border, a few leaves soiled. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. STC 17158.
"'The Prince' is far more than a book of directions to any one of the many Italian princelings. Machiavelli had profited by his journeys to France and Germany to make the most able analyses (in his reports to his government) of a national government, and he now wrote for the guidance of the ruler by whom alone Italy, desperately divided, could be restored to political health. Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind--it should be remembered that a parallel work to 'The Prince' was his historical essay on the first ten books of Livy. Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery. Many of the remedies he proposed for the rescue of Italy were eventually applied. His concept of the qualities demanded from a ruler and the absolute need of a national militia came to fruition in the monarchies of the seventeenth century and their national armies"--Printing and the Mind of Man 63 (Rome: Blado 1532 edition).
"'The Prince' is far more than a book of directions to any one of the many Italian princelings. Machiavelli had profited by his journeys to France and Germany to make the most able analyses (in his reports to his government) of a national government, and he now wrote for the guidance of the ruler by whom alone Italy, desperately divided, could be restored to political health. Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind--it should be remembered that a parallel work to 'The Prince' was his historical essay on the first ten books of Livy. Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery. Many of the remedies he proposed for the rescue of Italy were eventually applied. His concept of the qualities demanded from a ruler and the absolute need of a national militia came to fruition in the monarchies of the seventeenth century and their national armies"--Printing and the Mind of Man 63 (Rome: Blado 1532 edition).