II. Hereditary Principalities
I will leave aside any discussion of republics, because I have discussed them at length elsewhere.1 I will turn only to the principality, and weave together the threads I have just laid out, and discuss how these principalities can be governed and kept.
I say, then, that in hereditary states, accustomed to the family of their prince, the difficulties of keeping them are far smaller than in new ones. It is enough not to depart from the order established by one’s forebears, and then to take events as they come; so that if such a prince is of ordinary diligence, he will always keep his state, unless some extraordinary and overwhelming force deprives him of it; and even if he is deprived of it, he will win it back at the usurper’s first stumble.
We have in Italy, for example, the Duke of Ferrara, who withstood the attacks of the Venetians in 1484 and those of Pope Julius in 1510 for no other reason than that his family was long established in that dominion.2 For the natural prince has fewer reasons and less need to give offense, and so it follows that he will be better loved; and unless extraordinary vices make him hated, it is reasonable that his own people should naturally wish him well. And in the long continuance of a dominion the memories and the causes of innovation die away; for every change leaves behind the jutting stones on which the next can be built.
Notes
1. Probably a reference to his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, on which he was working in the same years.
2. Machiavelli runs two dukes together: Ercole I d’Este (ruled 1471–1505), who fought Venice in 1482–84, and his son Alfonso I (ruled 1505–34), attacked by Pope Julius II in 1510. Both kept their state.