esires to maintain his position, to have learned how to be other than good, and to use his goodness as necessity requires.” (p.40) This was a shocking point of view for the period in which he was writing it. It was a complete departure from what everyone else had believed. Machiavelli believed that a Prince must not only be good but when the occasion called he must also be evil. On the characteristics of Princes Machiavelli, states that a Prince should be miserly over liberal, and feared over loved but never hated. He wrote that a prince’s main objective should be war and always have good arms and good allies to be in good standing with his people. Machiavelli finishes his treatise by giving his main reason for writing it, which was to inspire someone to take initiative and to unify Italy. He felt that it was the perfect time for a new ruler to come to power because of the lack of unity and national need for a strong government. I believe that Machiavelli's Prince, although a Masterpiece of its time departed to far from the traditional policies. Machiavelli makes a good point about the need for a prince to be flexible in his rule and not always good but he becomes to extreme and comes off sounding like a wannabe dictator. His rule is too harsh and while his ideas may work in some situations. I believe that his harsh uncompassionate rule would eventually bring down any prince who tried to follow it. ...
