THE fact that Machiavelli would prefer his prince to be surrounded by a coterie of willing sycophants, then leads to the problem of servants feeling confident enough to be open and honest with their master. Nobody, after all, wants to be shot on account of being the messenger who brings forth bad tidings:

The only way to guard yourself from flatterers is to let people understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you. However, when everyone feels free to tell you the truth, respect for you goes down.

Naturally, as far as the servant is concerned there is a very fine balance between having the freedom to be honest and losing all sense of respect for one’s superior. Machiavelli’s solution is for the prince to choose his closest advisers from among the most wise and discerning:

With these councillors, separately and collectively, he ought to behave in such a way that each of them should know that the more freely he speaks, the more he will be preferred. Outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and stick to his decisions. He who does otherwise is either beaten by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he is laughed at.

When all is said and done, however, it must be up to the prince what he chooses to believe and not the decision of his councillors. The prince must employ patience and discretion, whilst dishonesty should be met with anger and intolerance. If a prince is not himself wise, on the other hand, he will never understand the value in either accepting or rejecting advice:

Therefore it must be inferred that good advice, no matter where it comes from, is a result of the wisdom of the prince. The wisdom of the prince does not come from good advice.

Frederick himself appreciates the dangers of poor or malicious counsel, not simply towards princes but also in relation to the sovereign who finds himself disastrously misled. It can also disguise the true character of he who governs:

The princes which were insensitive to their reputation were only the indolent, or the voluptuous abandoned to their weakness; they was composed of cheap matter which no virtue animated. It is true that very cruel tyrants liked the praise; but it was in them an odious vanity – a vice. They wanted the esteem because they deserved the opposite.

The prince that deflects such flattery has a more noble spirit and is therefore less likely to become corrupt. Yet some councillors have been known for grounding their deceit in some basis of reality:

The majority of the men give into the flattery which justifies their tastes, and which is not a complete lie; they cannot really punish him who says himself to them the good of which they themselves are convinced. The flattery which is based on a solid basis is the most subtle of all; it is necessary to understanding this kind very well, to see the nuance which it adds to the truth.

Unlike the monarch who was born into a world of privilege, with very little experience of the real world, the prince has usually lived among a variety of ordinary men and are thus more accustomed to recognising the dishonest craft of the weasel wordsmith:

The princes who were men before becoming kings, can remind themselves of what they were, and do not accustom themselves so easily with the condiments of the flattery. Those who have reigned all their life were always nourished by these spices, like the gods, and they would die of lethargy if all praises are taken away.

The important thing, says Frederick, is to differentiate between flattery and praise.

TO BE CONTINUED…