*Of all Machiavelli’s works The Prince is undoubtedly the greatest; and a new English edition of it is likely to be welcome to all those who have not the advantage of reading it in the classical Italian original.

For a true appreciation of Machiavelli, impossible in a brief Preface, I must refer the English reader to Macaulay’s Essay on the Italian historian and statesman. In it he will see how our Author’s ideas and work were wrongfully and wilfully misinterpreted by the ver y men who, while profiting by his wisdom, have with great ingratitude criticised the statesman and defamed his name, as that of the inventor of the worst political system ever imagined.