While The Prince is doubtless the most widely read of his works, the
Discourses on the Ten Books of Titus Livy perhaps most honestly expresses
Machiavelli's personal political beliefs and commitments, in particular, his
republican sympathies. The Discourses certainly draw upon the same reservoir of
language and concepts that fed The Prince, but the former treatise leads us to
draw conclusions quite different from—many scholars have said contradictory
to—the latter. In particular, across the two works, Machiavelli consistently
and clearly distinguishes between a minimal and a full conception of
“political” or “civil” order, and thus constructs a hierarchy of ends within
his general account of communal life. A minimal constitutional order is one in
which subjects live securely (vivere sicuro), ruled by a strong government
which holds in check the aspirations of both nobility and people, but is in
turn balanced by other legal and institutional mechanisms. In a fully
constitutional regime, however, the goal of the political order is the freedom
of the community (vivere libero), created by the active participation of, and
contention between, the nobility and the people. As Quentin Skinner (202, 189–212)
has argued, liberty forms a value that anchors Machiavelli's political theory
and guides his evaluations of the worthiness of different types of regimes.
Only in a republic, for which Machiavelli expresses a distinct preference, may
this goal be attained.
Machiavelli adopted this position on both pragmatic and principled
grounds. During his career as a secretary and diplomat in the Florentine
republic, Machiavelli came to acquire vast experience of the inner workings of
French government, which became his model for the “secure” (but not free)
polity. Although Machiavelli makes relatively little comment about the French
monarchy in The Prince, he devotes a great deal of attention to France in the
Discourses.
Why would Machiavelli effusively praise (let alone even analyze) a
hereditary monarchy in a work supposedly designed to promote the superiority of
republics? The answer stems from Machiavelli's aim to contrast the best case
scenario of a monarchic regime with the institutions and organization of a republic.
Even the most excellent monarchy, in Machiavelli's view, lacks certain salient
qualities that are endemic to properly constituted republican government and
that make the latter constitution more desirable than the former.
Machiavelli asserts that the greatest virtue of the French kingdom and
its king is the dedication to law. “The kingdom of France is moderated more by
laws than any other kingdom of which at our time we have knowledge,”
Machiavelli declares (Machiavelli 1965, 314, trans. altered). The explanation
for this situation Machiavelli refers to the function of the Parlement. “The
kingdom of France,” he states, “lives under laws and orders more than any other
kingdom. These laws and orders are maintained by Parlements, notably that of Paris:
by it they are renewed any time it acts against a prince of the kingdom or in
its sentences condemns the king. And up to now it has maintained itself by
having been a persistent executor against that nobility” (Machiavelli 1965,
422). These passages of the Discourses seem to suggest that Machiavelli has
great admiration for the institutional arrangements that obtain in France.
Specifically, the French king and the nobles, whose power is such that they
would be able to oppress the populace, are checked by the laws of the realm
which are enforced by the independent authority of the Parlement. Thus,
opportunities for unbridled tyrannical conduct are largely eliminated,
rendering the monarchy temperate and “civil.”
Yet such a regime, no matter how well ordered and law-abiding, remains
incompatible with vivere libero. Discussing the ability of a monarch to meet
the people's wish for liberty, Machiavelli comments that “as far as the …
popular desire of recovering their liberty, the prince, not being able to satisfy
them, must examine what the reasons are that make them desire being free”
(Machiavelli 1965, 237). He concludes that a few individuals want freedom
simply in order to command others; these, he believes, are of sufficiently
small number that they can either be eradicated or bought off with honors. By
contrast, the vast majority of people confuse liberty with security, imagining
that the former is identical to the latter: “But all the others, who are
infinite, desire liberty in order to live securely (vivere sicuro)”
(Machiavelli 1965, 137). Although the king cannot give such liberty to the
masses, he can provide the security that they crave.
“As for the rest, for whom it
is enough to live securely (vivere sicuro), they are easily satisfied by making
orders and laws that, along with the power of the king, comprehend everyone's
security. And once a prince does this, and the people see that he never breaks
such laws, they will shortly begin to live securely (vivere sicuro) and
contentedly”(Machiavelli 1965, 237).
Machiavelli then applies this general principle directly to the case of
France, remarking that “the people live securely (vivere sicuro) for no other
reason than that its kings are bound to infinite laws in which the security of
all their people is comprehended” (Machiavelli 1965, 237). The law-abiding
character of the French regime ensures security, but that security, while
desirable, ought never to be confused with liberty. This is the limit of
monarchic rule: even the best kingdom can do no better than to guarantee to its
people tranquil and orderly government.
Machiavelli holds that one of the consequences of such vivere sicuro is
the disarmament of the people. He comments that regardless of “how great his
kingdom is,” the king of France “lives as a tributary” to foreign mercenaries.
“This all comes from having
disarmed his people and having preferred … to enjoy the immediate profit of
being able to plunder the people and of avoiding an imaginary rather than a
real danger, instead of doing things that would assure them and make their
states perpetually happy. This disorder, if it produces some quiet times, is in
time the cause of straitened circumstances, damage and irreparable ruin “(Machiavelli
1965, 410).
A state that makes security a priority cannot afford to arm its
populace, for fear that the masses will employ their weapons against the
nobility (or perhaps the crown). Yet at the same time, such a regime is
weakened irredeemably, since it must depend upon foreigners to fight on its behalf.
In this sense, any government that takes vivere sicuro as its goal generates a
passive and impotent populace as a inescapable result. By definition, such a
society can never be free in Machiavelli's sense of vivere libero, and hence is
only minimally, rather than completely, political or civil.
Confirmation of this interpretation of the limits of monarchy for
Machiavelli may be found in his further discussion of the disarmament of the
people, and its effects, in The Art of War. Addressing the question of whether
a citizen army is to be preferred to a mercenary one, he insists that the
liberty of a state is contingent upon the military preparedness of its
subjects. Acknowledging that “the king [of France] has disarmed his people in
order to be able to command them more easily,” Machiavelli still concludes
“that such a policy is … a defect in that kingdom, for failure to attend to
this matter is the one thing that makes her weak” (Machiavelli 1965, 584,
586–587). In his view, whatever benefits may accrue to a state by denying a
military role to the people are of less importance than the absence of liberty
that necessarily accompanies such disarmament. The problem is not merely that
the ruler of a disarmed nation is in thrall to the military prowess of foreigners.
More crucially, Machiavelli believes, a weapons-bearing citizen militia remains
the ultimate assurance that neither the government nor some usurper will
tyrannize the populace. “So Rome was free four hundred years and was armed;
Sparta, eight hundred; many other cities have been unarmed and free less than
forty years” (Machiavelli 1965, 585). Machiavelli is confident that citizens
will always fight for their liberty—against internal as well as external
oppressors. Indeed, this is precisely why successive French monarchs have left
their people disarmed: they sought to maintain public security and order, which
for them meant the elimination of any opportunities for their subjects to wield
arms. The French regime, because it seeks security above all else (for the
people as well as for their rulers), cannot permit what Machiavelli takes to be
a primary means of promoting liberty.
The case of disarmament is an illustration of a larger difference
between minimally constitutional systems such as France and fully political
communities such as the Roman Republic, namely, the status of the classes
within the society. In France, the people are entirely passive and the nobility
is largely dependent upon the king, according to Machiavelli's own
observations. By contrast, in a fully developed republic such as Rome's, where
the actualization of liberty is paramount, both the people and the nobility
take an active (and sometimes clashing) role in self-government (McCormick
2011). The liberty of the whole, for Machiavelli, depends upon the liberty of
its component parts. In his famous discussion of this subject in the
Discourses, he remarks,
“To me those who condemn the
tumults between the Nobles and the Plebs seem to be caviling at the very thing
that was the primary cause of Rome's retention of liberty…. And they do not
realize that in every republic there are two different dispositions, that of
the people and that of the great men, and that all legislation favoring liberty
is brought about by their dissension” (Machiavelli 1965, 202–203).
Machiavelli knows that he is adopting an unusual perspective here, since
customarily the blame for the collapse of the Roman Republic has been assigned
to warring factions that eventually ripped it apart. But Machiavelli holds that
precisely the same conflicts generated a “creative tension” that was the source
of Roman liberty. For “those very tumults that so many inconsiderately condemn”
directly generated the good laws of Rome and the virtuous conduct of its
citizens (Machiavelli 1965, 202). Hence, “Enmities between the people and the
Senate should, therefore, be looked upon as an inconvenience which it is
necessary to put up with in order to arrive at the greatness of Rome”
(Machiavelli 1965, 211). Machiavelli thinks that other republican models (such
as those adopted by Sparta or Venice) will produce weaker and less successful
political systems, ones that are either stagnant or prone to decay when
circumstances change.
Popular Liberty and
Popular Speech
Machiavelli evinces particular confidence in the capacity of the people
to contribute to the promotion of communal liberty. In the Discourses, he
ascribes to the masses a quite extensive competence to judge and act for the
public good in various settings, explicitly contrasting the “prudence and
stability” of ordinary citizens with the unsound discretion of the prince.
Simply stated, “A people is more prudent, more stable, and of better judgment
than a prince” (Machiavelli 1965, 316). This is not an arbitrary expression of personal
preference on Machiavelli's part. He maintains that the people are more
concerned about, and more willing to defend, liberty than either princes or
nobles (Machiavelli 1965, 204–205). Where the latter tend to confuse their
liberty with their ability to dominate and control their fellows, the masses
are more concerned with protecting themselves against oppression and consider
themselves “free” when they are not abused by the more powerful or threatened
with such abuse (Machiavelli 1965, 203). In turn, when they fear the onset of
such oppression, ordinary citizens are more inclined to object and to defend
the common liberty. Such an active role for the people, while necessary for the
maintenance of vital public liberty, is fundamentally antithetical to the
hierarchical structure of subordination-and-rule on which monarchic vivere
sicuro rests. The preconditions of vivere libero simply do not favor the
security that is the aim of constitutional monarchy.
One of the main reasons that security and liberty remain, in the end,
incompatible for Machiavelli—and that the latter is to be preferred—may surely
be traced to the “rhetorical” character of his republicanism. Machiavelli
clearly views speech as the method most appropriate to the resolution of conflict
in the republican public sphere; throughout the Discourses, debate is elevated
as the best means for the people to determine the wisest course of action and
the most qualified leaders. The tradition of classical rhetoric, with which he
was evidently familiar, directly associated public speaking with contention:
the proper application of speech in the realms of forensic and deliberative
genres of rhetoric is an adversarial setting, with each speaker seeking to
convince his audience of the validity of his own position and the unworthiness
of his opponents'. This theme was taken up, in turn, by late medieval Italian
practitioners and theorists of rhetoric, who emphasized that the subject matter
of the art was lite (conflict). Thus, Machiavelli's insistence upon contention
as a prerequisite of liberty also reflects his rhetorical predilections (Viroli
1998). By contrast, monarchic regimes—even the most secure constitutional
monarchies such as France—exclude or limit public discourse, thereby placing
themselves at a distinct disadvantage. It is far easier to convince a single
ruler to undertake a disastrous or ill-conceived course of action than a
multitude of people. The apparent “tumult” induced by the uncertain liberty of
public discussion eventually renders more likely a decision conducive to the
common good than does the closed conversation of the royal court.
This connects to the claim in the Discourses that the popular elements
within the community form the best safeguard of civic liberty as well as the
most reliable source of decision-making about the public good. Machiavelli's
praise for the role of the people in securing the republic is supported by his
confidence in the generally illuminating effects of public speech upon the
citizen body. Near the beginning of the first Discourse, he notes that some may
object to the extensive freedom enjoyed by the Roman people to assemble, to
protest, and to veto laws and policies. But he responds that the Romans were
able to
“ Maintain liberty and order
because of the people's ability to discern the common good when it was shown to
them. At times when ordinary Roman citizens wrongly supposed that a law or
institution was designed to oppress them, they could be persuaded that their
beliefs are mistaken … [through] the remedy of assemblies, in which some man of
influence gets up and makes a speech showing them how they are deceiving
themselves. And as Tully says, the people, although they may be ignorant, can
grasp the truth, and yield easily when told what is true by a trustworthy man”
(Machiavelli 1965, 203).
The reference to Cicero (one of the few in the Discourses) confirms that
Machiavelli has in mind here a key feature of classical republicanism: the
competence of the people to respond to and support the words of the gifted
orator when he speaks truly about the public welfare.
Machiavelli returns to this theme and treats it more extensively at the
end of the first Discourse. In a chapter intended to demonstrate the
superiority of popular over princely government, he argues that the people are
well ordered, and hence “prudent, stable and grateful,” so long as room is made
for public speech and deliberation within the community. Citing the formula vox
populi, vox dei, Machiavelli insists that
“ Public opinion is remarkably
accurate in its prognostications…. With regard to its judgment, when two
speakers of equal skill are heard advocating different alternatives, very
rarely does one find the people failing to adopt the better view or incapable
of appreciating the truth of what it hears” (Machiavelli 1965, 316).
Not only are the people competent to discern the best course of action
when orators lay out competing plans, but they are in fact better qualified to
make decisions, in Machiavelli's view, than are princes. For example, “the
people can never be persuaded that it is good to appoint to an office a man of
infamous or corrupt habits, whereas a prince may easily and in a vast variety
of ways be persuaded to do this” (Machiavelli 1965, 316). Likewise, should the
people depart from the law-abiding path, they may readily be convinced to
restore order: “For an uncontrolled and tumultuous people can be spoken to by a
good man and easily led back into a good way. But no one can speak to a wicked
prince, and the only remedy is steel…. To cure the malady of the people words
are enough” (Machiavelli 1965, 317). The contrast Machiavelli draws is stark.
The republic governed by words and persuasion—in sum, ruled by public speech—is
almost sure to realize the common good of its citizens; and even should it err,
recourse is always open to further discourse. Non-republican regimes, because
they exclude or limit discursive practices, ultimately rest upon coercive
domination and can only be corrected by violent means.
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