Machiavelli's Prince & More's Utopia on Government

Machiavelli wrote The Prince late in life, when he had been banished from Florentine political life, but was still hoping to win back the confidence of Lorenzo de Medici. It is a treatise on the art of government. It is often described as being cynical, or concerned with ruthless power politics, but in fact it seems merely to be taking the facts of Renaissance Italian politics as a given, and proposing a policy by which an autocrat could rule as well as his society allowed. Machiavelli certainly does not think that a ôNew Princeö should never feel or act out of compassion, but he does think that other factors will often have to overrule compassion if the PrinceÆs rule is to be effective.

Machiavelli introduces the concept of the ônew princeö in Chapters V through IX of The Prince. By a ônew princeö he means a man who has become an autocratic ruler, or monarch, of a state that had previously had some other, unrelated ruler or some other form of government. In these chapters he discusses the various paths by which a man could become a new prince. These include: by oneÆs own abilities, that is, by military conquest; by fortune, that is, by appointment by a new conqueror; by treachery, that is, by a coup dÆetat; and by election, either by the few rich and powerful or by the

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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 862
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)

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