The German Constitution

[p. 553]

|553| or to swarms of foreign rabble, who were always costly and devastating to their paymasters and still more often dreadful and dangerous, some of whose leaders raised themselves to princes, when Germans, Spaniards, French and Swiss plundered it and foreign cabinets decided the fate of this nation, – in the deep feeling of this condition of universal wretchedness, of hatred, disruption and blindness, an Italian statesman grasped with cold composure the necessary idea of the rescue of Italy through its union in one state. With strict consistency he prescribed the path which both this rescue and the corruption and blind frenzy of the age made necessary, and called upon his prince to take up the sublime role of a saviour of Italy and the glory of putting an end to its misfortune, in the following words:

²²⁾“If, as I have said, it was necessary that, in order to see the greatness of Moses, the people of Israel should be slaves in Egypt, that, in order to recognise the sublimity and courage of Cyrus, the Persians should be oppressed by the Medes, and that, in order to bring the excellence of Theseus to light, the Athenians should be dispersed, so now, if one wishes to see the greatness of spirit of an Italian, it was necessary that Italy should fall into its present conditions, that it should be more enslaved than the Hebrews, more oppressed than the Persians, more dispersed than the Athenians, without a head, without order, beaten, despoiled, torn apart, plundered, and that it should have to bear ruin of every kind. And although since then a trace has at times shown itself in someone such that one might have thought he had been appointed by God for

22) Editors: Hegel excerpted the following sections from the last chapter of Machiavelli’s Principe from a French translation and enclosed them with his manuscript. (The German translation follows the edition of Lasson.) At the beginning of the excerpts Hegel remarks:
“Mach. addresses himself to Lorenzo de’ Medici, speaks of the present favourable moment for conquering Italy, but is governed by the deep feeling that only thereby can its misfortune end.”

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