60 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



We have now passed our censures upon Machiavelli and 

 given him the benefit of some excuses and mitigations, in turning 

 from him to our own times let me quote the closing words of 

 Macaulay's essay : — 



"In the church of Santa Croce, a monument was erected to 

 his memory, which is contemplated with reverence by all who can 

 distinguish the virtue of a great mind through the contemplation 

 of a degenerate age, and which will be approached with a still 

 deeper homage when the object to which his public life was de- 

 voted shall be attained, when the foreign yoke shall be broken, 

 when, a second Procida shall avenge the wrongs of the people, 

 when a happier Rienzi shall restore the good estate of Rome, 

 when the streets of Florence and Bologna shall again resound 

 with their ancient war cry, Popolo ; popolo ; muciano i tiranni. " 



Machiavelli to-day. — And now what of the year 1900? Is 

 there anything of Machiavelli left, but a bad name? Or are there 

 still some traces of his sinister methods to be found in the world? 



Foreign Relations. — What of our politics? Are our foreign 

 relations for instance, — our diplomacies, altogether free from the 

 suspicion of duphcity and self assertion? Are our wars of aggran- 

 dizement based solely upon the motives inspired by the rule which 

 requires us to do unto others as we would they should do unto us? 



It is very easy of course to see that nations other than our 

 own hardly make fair pretence of regulating their foreign affairs 

 by any other standard than that of self-interest, and of achieving 

 their ends by any other methods than those which seem for the 

 moment to be best fitted for success. Russia's and Germany's 

 huge thefts of Chinese territory are to our minds merely exhibi- 

 tions of the law of the jungle— the law of the tiger; and Mr. Cham- 

 berlain, in describing the deceit practised upon his government by 

 Russian diplomacy, made the very true and apposite remark that 

 " he who supped with the devil must have a long spoon. " Well, 

 that is precisely what these other nations say about us; or rather 

 they charge us not only with having very much the longest spoon, 

 but with having handled it so skilfully and energetically that we 

 have secured to ourselves more of the soup than all of the other 

 ladlers put together (a) . 



They remind us of 1712, and that incident by which we 

 rightly earned the name "perfidious Albion"; when Britain, 



(a) Kidd's Social Evolution, 304, 318; Lecky's Dem. & Lib. I, 308; 

 Spencer's Data of Ethics, 218." 



