This essay is a "review" of Machiavelli's The Prince, and includes a comparison and contrast with Thomas More's Utopia, in terms of their both being theoretical discussions of the nature of 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 "New Prince" should never feel or act out of compassion, but he does think that other factors will often have to overrule compassion if the Prince's rule is to be effective.
Machiavelli introduces the concept of the "new prince" in Chapters V through IX of The Prince. By a "new prince" 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 one's own abilities, that is, by military conquest; by fortune, that is, by appointment by a new conqueror; by treachery, that is, by a coup d'etat; and by election, either by the few rich and powerful or by the
6 
)
= 862
= 3 (250 words per page)
