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IN order to render this volume more complete by the elucidation of various parts of the text in those points of history not generally known, we have thought proper to subjoin an Appendix, containing an account af Savanarola from a letter of Machiavelli to one of his friends. That Machiavelli did not believe in the diginity of his mission is abundantly evident; he only considered that he rendered a service to mankind as being the avowed enemy of the pope, the iniquities of whose spiritual and temporal government our author loudly exclaimed against.
The conduct of Borgia at Sinigaglia being more than once referred to, we have given the narrative of Machiavelli, who does not justify the deed, though he evidently considered it a partial evil, producing a general good; inasmuch as the parties kept Italy full of commotions and perpetual civil war.
We constantly hear people exclaim against breaches of national faith and the law of nations; and, therefore, we have given our author's farther considerations on that subject in his reflections on Livy, and his portrait of Ferdinand V. of Spain, which will be found highly interesting to the political reader.
The subject of Neutrality, which our author treats in Chapter XXI of "The Prince," being admirably continued in one of his letters to Francis Vettori, we thought it of sufficient importance to form a portion of the Appendix.
The preceding, are merely illustrations of the text; but the next article, the Duties of an Ambassador, is much more; and if this piece alone were preserved of Machiavelli, it would stamp him as a political writer of the first class.
The last article that we have thought proper to add is a fragment on the Means of securing Success, which, with the former article, ought to be perpetually before the eyes of every statesman and prince in Europe, as conveying that species of instruction of which they appear to be so wofully ignorant.