For those cities, more especially, which have been used to freedom or to be governed by their own citizens, rest far better satisfied with a government which they do not see, even though it involve something of oppression, than with one which standing constantly before their eyes, seems every day to reproach them with the disgrace of servitude.
And to the prince there is another advantage in this method of government, namely, that as the judges and magistrates who administer the laws civil and criminal within these cities, are not under his control, no decision of theirs can throw responsibility or discredit upon him; so that he thus escapes many occasions of calumny and hatred.
Of the truth whereof, besides the ancient instances which might be noted, we have a recent example here in Italy.
For Genoa, as everyone knows, has many times been occupied by the French king, who always, until lately, sent thither a French governor to rule in his name.
Recently, however, not from choice but of necessity, he has permitted the town to be self-governed under a Genoese ruler; and anyone who had to decide which of these two methods of governing gives the greater security to the king’s authority and the greater content to the people themselves, would assuredly have to pronounce in favour of the latter.
Men, moreover, in proportion as they see you averse to usurp authority over them, grow the readier to surrender themselves into your hands; and fear you less on the score of their freedom, when they find you acting towards them with consideration and kindness. It was the display of these qualities that moved the Capuans to ask the Romans for a praetor; for had the Romans betrayed the least eagerness to send them one, they would at once have conceived jealousy and grown estranged.
But why turn for examples to Capua and Rome, when we have them close at hand in Tuscany and Florence? Who is there but knows what a