CHAPTER VII

WHENCE THAT WHEN CHANGES TAKE PLACE FROM LIBERTY TO SLAVERY, AND FROM SLAVERY TO LIBERTY, SOME ARE EFFECTED WITHOUT BLOODSHED, AND SOME ARE FULL OF IT

Some may doubt whence it arises that many changes that are made from liberty to tyranny, and contrarywise, some are done with bloodshed, some without. For (as is learned from history) in such changes, some times an infinite number of men have been killed, some times no one has even been injured, as happened in the change that Rome made from Kings to Consuls, where only the Tarquins were driven out and no one else suffered injury. Which depends on this, whether that State that is changed does so with violence, or not: for when it is effected with violence, it does so with injury to many; then in its ruin, it is natural that the injured ones would want to avenge themselves, and from this desire for vengeance results bloodshed and the death of men. But when that change of State is made by common consent of the general public who had made it great, then there is no reason when it is overthrown, for the said general public to harm anyone but the Head. And the State of Rome was of this kind, and so was the expulsion of the Tarquins, as also was the State of De’ Medici in Florence, when in the year one thousand four hundred ninety four [1494] no one was harmed but themselves. And such changes do not come to be very dangerous; but those are indeed very dangerous that are made by those who have to avenge themselves, which were always of a sort to make those who read (and others) to become terrified: but because history is full of these examples, I shall omit them.