The solution, Machiavelli argues, is to frame the laws relating to the constitution in such a way as to engineer a tensely balanced equilibrium between these opposed social forces, one in which all the parties remain involved in the business of government, and each ‘keeps watch over the other’ in order to forestall both ‘the rich men’s arrogance’ and ‘the people’s licence’ (199). As the rival groups jealously scrutinize each other for any signs of a move to take over supreme power, the resolution of the pressures thus engendered will mean that only those ‘laws and institutions’ which are ‘conducive to public liberty’ will actually be passed. Although motivated entirely by their selfish interests, the factions will thus be guided, as if by an invisible hand, to promote the public interest in all their legislative acts: ‘all the laws made in favour of liberty’ will ‘result from their discord’ (203).
This praise of dissension horrified Machiavelli’s contemporaries. Francesco Guicciardini spoke for them all when he replied in his Considerations on the Discourses that ‘to praise disunity is like praising a sick man’s disease because of the virtues of the remedy applied to it’.[6] Machiavelli’s argument ran counter to the whole tradition of republican thought in Florence, a tradition in which the belief that all discord must be outlawed as factious, together with the belief that faction constitutes the deadliest threat to civic liberty, had been emphasized ever since the end of the thirteenth century, when Remigio de’ Girolami, Brunetto Latini, Dino Compagni, and above all Dante had issued fierce denunciations of their fellow-citizens for endangering their liberties by refusing to live in peace. To insist, therefore, on the astounding judgement that — as Machiavelli expresses it — the disorders of Rome ‘deserve the highest praise’ was to repudiate one of the most cherished assumptions of Florentine humanism.
Machiavelli is unrepentant, however, in his attack on this orthodox belief. He explicitly mentions ‘the opinion of the many’ who hold that the continual clashes between the plebs and nobles in Rome left the city ‘so full of confusion’ that only ‘good Fortune and military virtú’ prevented it from tearing itself to pieces. But he still insists that those who condemn Rome’s disorders are failing to recognize that they served to prevent the triumph of sectarian interests, and are thus ‘finding fault with what as a first cause kept Rome free’ (202). So he concludes that, even if the dissensions were evil in themselves, they were nevertheless ‘an evil necessary to the attainment of Roman greatness’ (211).
Machiavelli goes on to argue that although a mixed constitution is necessary, it is by no means sufficient, to ensure that liberty is preserved. The reason is that — as he warns yet again — most people remain more committed to their own ambitions than to the public interest, and ‘never do anything good except by necessity’ (201). The outcome is a perpetual tendency for over-mighty citizens and powerful interest groups to alter the balance of the constitution in favour of their own selfish and factional ends, thereby introducing the seeds of corruption into the body politic and endangering its liberty.
To meet this ineradicable threat, Machiavelli has one further constitutional proposal to advance: he maintains that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. It is essential in the first place to learn the danger signals — to recognize the means by which an individual citizen or a political party may be able ‘to get more power than is safe’ (265). Next, it is essential to develop a special set of laws and institutions for dealing with such emergencies. A republic, as Machiavelli puts it, ‘ought to have among its ordini this: that the citizens are to be watched so that they cannot under cover of good do evil and so that they gain only such popularity as advances and does not harm liberty’ (291). Finally, it is then essential for everyone ‘to keep their eyes open’, holding themselves in readiness not only to identify such corrupting tendencies, but also to employ the force of the law in order to stamp them out as soon as — or even before — they begin to become a menace (266).
Machiavelli couples this analysis with the suggestion that there is one further constitutional lesson of major significance to be learnt from the early history of Rome. Since Rome preserved its freedom for more than four hundred years, it seems that its citizens must have correctly identified the most serious threats to their liberties, and gone on to evolve the right ordini for dealing with them. It follows that, if we wish to understand such dangers and their remedies, it will be advantageous for us to turn once more to the history of the Roman republic, seeking to profit from her ancient wisdom and apply it to the modern world.
As the example of Rome shows, the initial danger that any mixed constitution needs to face will always stem from those who benefited from the previous regime. In Machiavelli’s terms, this is the threat posed by ‘the sons of Brutus’, a problem he first mentions in chapter 16 and later underlines at the beginning of his third Discourse. Junius Brutus freed Rome from the tyranny of Tarquinius Superbus, the last of her kings; but Brutus’ own sons were among those who had ‘profited from the tyrannical government’ (235). The establishment of ‘the people’s liberty’ thus seemed to them no better than slavery. As a result, they ‘were led to conspire against their native city by no other reason than that they could not profit unlawfully under the consuls as they had under the kings’ (236).
Against this type of risk ‘there is no more powerful remedy, none more effective nor more certain nor more necessary, than to kill the sons of Brutus’ (236). Machiavelli admits that it may appear cruel — and he adds in his iciest tones that it is certainly ‘an instance striking among recorded events’ — that Brutus should have been willing to ‘sit on the judgement seat and not merely condemn his sons to death but be present at their deaths’ (424). But he insists that such severity is in fact indispensable. ‘For he who seizes a tyranny and does not kill Brutus, and he who sets a state free and does not kill Brutus’ sons, maintains himself but a little while’ (425).
A further threat to political stability arises from the notorious propensity of self-governing republics to slander and exhibit ingratitude towards their leading citizens. Machiavelli first alludes to this deficiency in chapter 29, where he argues that one of the gravest errors any city is liable to commit ‘in keeping herself free’ is that of doing ‘injury to citizens whom she should reward’. This is a particularly dangerous disease to leave untreated, since those who suffer such injustices are generally in a strong position to strike back, thereby bringing their city ‘all the quicker to tyranny — as happened to Rome with Caesar, who by force took for himself what ingratitude denied him’ (259).
The only possible remedy is to institute special ordini designed to discourage the envious and the ungrateful from undermining the reputations of prominent people. The best method of doing this is ‘to give enough openings for bringing charges’. Any citizen who feels he has been slandered must be able, ‘without any fear or without any hesitation’, to demand that his accuser should appear in court to provide a proper substantiation of his claims. If it then emerges, once a formal accusation ‘has been made and well investigated’, that the charges cannot be upheld, the law must provide for the slanderer to be severely punished (215–16).
6
Francesco Guicciardini, ‘Considerations on the “Discourses” of Machiavelli’ in